


Brother, Lover, Doctor, Friend

by hypertensivehitachiins



Series: Brother, Lover, Doctor, Friend [1]
Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Parents, Eating Disorders, Gender Issues, M/M, Medicine, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Sibling Incest, Twincest, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 65,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypertensivehitachiins/pseuds/hypertensivehitachiins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaoru has an eating disorder, and Hikaru tries to be supportive. The twins' mother sends them to a clinic in Hawaii where they make new friends, sort out their feelings, and change the lives of everyone they meet. With cameo appearances from the rest of the host club.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tough Love

Even at 45, Mrs. Hitachiin was a professional beauty. The chorus heard at every birthday party for as long as anyone could recall - that she looked not a day over 30 - was not mere flattery. She had a complexion of porcelain that radiated of saunas, seaweed wrappings, and skim-milk lattes. Her chin and cheekbones claimed ancestry going back to the Sun Goddess, and her frame seemed ready to break under the weight of the auburn hair that bounded from her scalp. It was naturally auburn, and naturally curly - a rarity among the Japanese. But then there was little about the twins' mother that was ordinary.

A second-generation zaibatsu heiress, her beauty alone may have been more than enough to earn her celebrity status. She might have enjoyed it and moved on to become a decorative housewife, as Golden Girls like her had their futures assured-as long as they limited their appearances on Page Six to a respectable number and did not kick up too much of a fuss when matched in marriage to a promising company executive or a competitor's son. And, indeed, everything had started innocently enough: skipping school to attend runway shows, flying to Paris Fashion Week on a whim and forgetting to tell anyone. Then she managed to accost Yves Saint Laurent himself in a backstage hallway, and walked away with an invitation to a personal fitting at his atelier where any other heiress might have been dragged off by security.

By the time she was 20, her presence in the front row at a Tokyo runway show had the power to make or break the fashion line's sales for that season. At 22, she was frontlining shows herself, walking down runways alongside supermodels, and top fashion houses fought over the right to dress the It Girl and claim her endorsement. At 24, the announcement that Miss H was releasing her own collection seemed almost overdue. After all, forays into handbag design were as ubiquitous among heiresses as purse-sized lapdogs. Her first collection was touted as "imaginative" and "refreshing" and sold out in five days, but Miss H was not happy. She fumed at the reviews, which she believed to have been bought by well-meaning relatives, and one fine day, she stood up in front of her father and asked for access to her trust fund - the one that would be hers in full when she was married.

She got it. She always got what she asked for. Stopping a man in the tracks of his argument - even if that man was her father - was nothing. She could have stopped a horse mid-gallop with her eyes alone. For the next five years, she and her seamstresses slept barely a wink. Miss H worked her staff to the bone sewing her schemes into cloth, determined to prove that she was more than a rich name and a pretty face. She got that too, unsurprisingly. By 30, she was known as the Japanese Chanel and her net worth was more than her father's.

In matters of love - as she was unashamed to admit to her sons - she had always held the same attitude. "I prefer to run my social life like a dictator. If you like someone, why go to the trouble of seduction when you can just order them to go out with you?" she'd say with a smirk. She had met the twins' father, an unassuming salaryman, quite by accident, when her company's new IT staff was getting a tour of the premises. She passed, she saw, she ordered him to meet her at 6 at a bar called Orange. Six months later, she ordered him to marry her, and he was adopted into the Hitachiin clan.

"Yes, boys. How can I help?" Mrs. Hitachiin looked up from the catalogue mock-up she was editing, and languidly brushed her bangs from her face - an unnecessary gesture, as they were neither in her eyes, nor was it hot. She might have been changing masks. Mrs. H was performance personified: much like with her sons, no one could ever say for certain where reality ended and theatrics began.

There were no theatrics on the other side of the table, though. Not now.

"Kaoru has something to tell you." Hikaru's face was stony, and even his voice sounded angular. "Go on."

Kaoru turned to his brother, his jaw trembling. Don't do this. I already feel terrible and naked. Let's go. Please. Don't make me say it.

"I want you to say it."

"It's nothing."

"You need help, and I don't know how to help you anymore."

There was no arguing with that fact. Even Kaoru couldn't deny that as of that morning, he had reached the end of his rope.

A pair of eyes, sun-colored like theirs, waited across the table.

"Mother, we thought…" Kaoru's voice grew hoarse and started to fail. "We thought… you might have experience with something like this."

"What is it?"

"Hikaru has been concerned about me because I've been…" He looked at his brother again, fighting the urge to fall into his arms and burst into tears, if only to melt that stony jaw of his, and warm that icy stare. But his brother refused to see him. Hikaru was helpless, angry, and when Hikaru had a hammer, you could be sure that every problem was a nail. Anger at himself, anger at the world, angry at the situation there seemed to be no way out of - it was the only weapon he had left. Plus, what was being done was for his own good, Kaoru knew. And he agreed. Sometimes tough love was just what was needed. He himself would have done just the same.

"I've been throwing up a lot."

"Are you sick?"

"No, I… I make myself throw up." He felt Hikaru's hand reach out and rest on his. A shiver ran across his shoulders and he hung his head. The words had sucked him dry.

Mrs. H smiled, leaning back in her chair - the smile of a happy girl in a red convertible on a mountain road on a hot day. "Whatever for, my love? You're dashingly handsome just as you are. And anyway, that's a young girl's disease - if you can call it that."

"Mother!" Hikaru took his brother by the shoulders and sat him down at the foot of a nearby Ottoman, taking a brief moment to glance into his eyes and steal a finger across his chin, his own face now softer. Kaoru's eyes were a touch moist, and far away.

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry. You're right, it's not like I don't know all about it. What beautiful girl doesn't? You give up a few things, chasing a dream. My girls in the fashion business and I - we all did it. Hah - what DIDN'T we do to stay thin? It was almost a phase, like ponies. And then in my 20's, when I had first founded my atelier, why, je vivais l'amour et le cafe creme*, as they say. There was no time to eat! I don't understand why a boy would do it of course, unless you two are competitive rowers, and I'm such a terrible mother that I've forgotten!" She laughed, the happy girl in the convertible rearing her head again.

*I lived on love and lattes

Hikaru grew pale. But then again, this was to be expected. One source of his mother's strength was the remarkable ability to stare problems straight in the face and laugh them down until they'd gone up in a poof of smoke. It was all well and good for her, of course, but at that moment he did not relish going up in smoke.

"Mother!" he bellowed, "It DOESN'T make sense, that's the point." The older twin was fuming. The younger had slumped over his knees with a small moan. "He tells me it feels good! Can you imagine?! I don't understand, and I always understand him. He tells me it gets him high for hours, makes him forget his problems. What those problems might be I cannot say - we are who we are for Pete's sake, but it is what it is. And I'm scared, mom. I found him passed out in the bathroom in a puddle of his own bile. I could barely wake him up. And he won't listen to me. I don't think he's had anything but coffee in weeks. I'm scared. I don't want to lose my little brother."

Hikaru let his words ricochet off the walls. Mrs. H's expression betrayed no change.

"Kaoru, is this true?"

"No, I'M LYING, mom."

"Quiet. I wasn't talking to you."

There was no answer.

Mrs. H. could not understand it either, and she did her best to hide her annoyance. She got through much life on her eternally sunny disposition, laughing off problems as she went, but she liked to think that she was not an unintelligent woman. Were her sons playing at something? It seemed like they always were - they were such little pranksters. After 15 years, it was still so hard to read them at times. Was it a bid for attention? Unlikely - married to her fashion house though she was, she had done her best to carve out time for her boys. She sincerely believed she was better than most mothers of her caste in that way. Had the cross-gender cosplays put on by the Host Club at school finally gone too far?…

"If it has anything to do with that Host Club…"

Hikaru pressed his lips. It was true that Kaoru had been especially avoidant of Honey lately. And Kaoru had alluded a few times to a theory he had about Tamaki and a pumpkin-carriage that would change back to its original shape at midnight. That had certainly sounded cracked to say the least. Then there was Haruhi, too, and how she had changed all their lives, and the three-way dalliance that he, Kaoru, and Tamaki had struck up with her. Of course, he preferred to think of it as simply a particularly enjoyable way of grinding Tamaki's gears. (Because bros came before hoes, did they not?)

"No. It's like any group of friends, I suppose. We have our ups and downs. We crossdress sometimes, but it's all just for fun. I really don't think this is Kaoru's way of trying to be more feminine. He's not that big of an idiot."

Mrs. H. sighed.

"Well, alright, I can make some calls. Professional opinions differ on the matter, and like I said, I have seen quite a bit of this, though I am by no means an expert. But, Kaoru." She leaned forward, trying unsuccessfully to catch her younger son's eyes. "Listen to me. There's a good chance you'll have to… go away for a few months. We can say you've decided to study abroad. Japan's doesn't have the right sorts of clinics just yet - at least not good ones - but the US has plenty. It won't even be that much of a lie. Your brother will have to take some time off too, of course, just so no one gets suspicious. But if you think there's anything glamorous about being put away, think again. Once you're in, you cannot come and go as you please. They watch you like a hawk. You are not allowed to have contact with the outside world. That means no computers, no cell phones, no carrier pigeons, nothing. And visiting hours are short; you'll be lucky if they're held every day."

She waited, having laid her trap. After all, the twins seemed to enjoy their newfound friend group so much, no charade would be worth the separation. As for being separated from each other...

Hikaru's mouth curled into a smile. "How do YOU know so much about this, mother? Were THOSE KINDS of vacations a phase for you and your friends, too?"

"I had a friend," Mrs. H smiled back quickly and icily. "Who thought playing Ophelia would give her some leverage with her parents. Needless to say, she would've been better off playing dead."

Kaoru had sat up, breathing audibly. Hikaru had sidled up to him on the edge of the Ottoman and had his arm around his brother's shoulders, his free hand clutching Kaoru's in his lap.

"Can't we try here first?" Kaoru finally managed. "We've got access to the best doctors. We're friends with the Otori family."

"Japanese doctors will say it's a phase. And even if they don't, they might not know what to do. There isn't enough awareness of this… problem… in our country."

"Mom, you're not being fair. We've never been apart before for more than a couple of hours since the day we were born. How do you expect him to get better if on top of everything he's going to have to deal with the stress of being apart from me?"

Kaoru's head was buried in the crook of his brother's shoulder in silent affirmation of the fact.

"Well, then you'll just have to be committed with him. You can pretend you're anorexic, or a secret binger. That wouldn't be too hard, would it?"

"You're crazy, mom."

"If we're lucky, we might find you two a nice place in Hawaii. That way mummie can visit you on weekends." The cheerful girl in a convertible was back, her fingers skating over her IPhone screen, the sheer gloss of her fingernails offset by the sparkles that lined her french tips.

"You're mad. Come on, Kaoru." Hikaru stood briskly, steering his brother's sagging frame out the door.

"Oh, honey, you have no idea. But not to worry. I want nothing but the best for my special little boys."

Trust but verify, she thought to herself, pulling up the number for "Ophelia," a former comrade in arms with the Tokyo fashion police. Sometimes, there was no other way to deal with these twins except tough love.


	2. His and Her Circumstances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Mirror, mirror, don't you see,
> 
> What you show
> 
> is ruining me."

"Well, that was a whole lot of nothing."

Hikaru had steered his brother back to his room and sat him on the bed. Their bed. Hikaru of course had his own, too, in another bedroom where he spent hardly any time. Ever since they could remember, the twins had no need for two sets of anything, because they shared everything.

"I cannot BELIEVE that woman. She says she'd been there, that she had friends who had been there. And then she has the gall to suggest that her friend would've been better off playing dead. She should've seen you. You WERE half-dead."

"It's okay, Hikaru. You know she's as twisted as we are."

"No shit." The older twin had been pacing the room, avoiding his brother's eyes. Kaoru huddled at the edge of the bed, shriveled like a butterfly with broken wings. Hikaru could imagine it all too well, and had no interest in seeing it. It was painful enough as it was.

Truthfully, ever since Kaoru had been woken up by his brother slapping his cheeks and all but screaming bloody murder, his mind had been in a haze. It had felt good, better than anything, when he had first fallen down and felt his consciousness slip away. But when he woke, he woke in hell. He saw himself as if from a distance, dragged into the square for a public thrashing. His most shameful parts exposed, florid descriptions of his crimes screamed out loud. His throat burned, it was hard to talk, and he felt like he was three years old again, borne away by a current of events he could neither control nor understand. He had been all too happy to let his brother do the talking when they were with their mother. But things were moving too fast. Hikaru was angry. More angry than Kaoru had ever seen him be. And Kaoru hadn't even told him how things really stood.

"I'll do it, you know." Hikaru stopped pacing. "I'll go with you to America or wherever. I can pretend to have whatever it is I need to pretend I have. I can hold your hand every minute of every day. I can do anything. I just… UGH. How could she… How could YOU?! You told me you'd stop."

"Hikaru. This isn't what I need right now."

Hikaru had been protective of Kaoru since times immemorial, so the roleplays of artful angst that they staged for the Host Club came only too naturally. Contrary to popular belief, the brothers were not exactly identical: Kaoru had always been the more pensive and the slightly more clumsy one, given to staring at clouds lost in thought. Early on, Hikaru had gotten it into his head that if he wasn't there to guide him, one day that daft extension of himself would walk into traffic or forget to breathe. But the thought that his brother would hurt himself knowingly was too much to fathom. Did they not have the perfect love together? It hurt, physically, to think that the person in that body, so identical it could be his own, would harbor thoughts so alien - thoughts that might destroy it all. Between the two of them, Hikaru was the open book; at times it seemed like he couldn't keep a thought in his head without blurting it out. Kaoru was the one who let things stew, withdrawing until he couldn't take it anymore. Then he'd come to his brother and spill it all until the spot on his jacket where Kaoru had pressed his face was wet through and through. Hikaru was used to that. He even teased him about being such a crybaby, and Kaoru seemed to enjoy it. What Hikaru wasn't used to was knowing there were things he'd need to find out for himself.

"I've been there for you. I've always been there for you. We've always trusted only each other."

The older twin came over and sat by his brother, taking the other's hand in his. Ordinarily, he would have brought it to his lips, pressed them against each delicate knuckle and traced the rivers of veins under the surface. He might have kissed him on the mouth, too, but the smell of bloody vomit was still on Kaoru's lips and fingers. He'd forced his brother to stand in the shower, and rubbed his skin with a sponge until it was raw. Still, the smell was there, and took him back to the moment when his world had been sliced apart.

"But that's not enough, is it? You've never not let me in before. I'm lost."

His anger was ebbing. He tried to catch his brother's gaze, which was still ever so slightly out of focus.

"I want to be you. I want to share your pain."

Kaoru looked like he was about to say something, so Hikaru drew his arm around him and began rubbing comforting circles into his back.

"You don't want to be me."

A few years ago, the twins had attended their cousin's wedding with their parents. During the reception, one of the older clan members gave a toast, and talked about what it was like to have found that special someone to whom you were tied by the red string on your pinkie, per ancient legend. Once you met them, it felt like every joy was doubled and every sorrow halved. If that was so, Hikaru thought, the string that bound him to his intended was the shortest in the world.

That night, he had come to Kaoru's bed for the first time since their parents had decided it was time for them to sleep in separate rooms. Kaoru did not seem surprised. First their hands found each other, than their mouths did, then they slowly slipped off each other's pajamas and kissed until morning, not talking about everything and anything for once. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. What was Kaoru's was Hikaru's, and what was Hikaru's was Kaoru's. If one wanted to touch the other's body, there was no reason in the world he could think of why he shouldn't. For each, it was like touching his own. After the night they had crossed the Rubicon, Hikaru came to Kaoru's bed every night, and their pillow time spilled into daytime games. Everything else stayed much the same. They didn't talk about it-they didn't need to. It seemed like a conclusion to things that was only logical.

Hikaru felt himself sliding down to his knees on the floor and buried his face in Kaoru's lap, clutching his brother's hands between his so tightly their knuckles had turned white.

"No, Kaoru. Please. For God's sake, stop pushing me away like this. Tell me why the hell you're doing this. Tell me. You're my brother. My one and only. I don't care what it is. I don't care how bad. I'll suffer anything for your sake. I love you."

You do, do you? Everything, huh? That's what you think, because you don't want to change. Because you want to keep playing this game for two forever. Because you don't want to examine your life-or maybe you can't.

You're the one who comes up with all these ridiculous schemes, Kaoru had shouted. Yeah, well, you're the one who really gets into them, Hikaru had screamed back. The words from the scripted argument they'd staged for their friends a few months ago held more truth than either realized. And Kaoru, sensitive and perceptive little Kaoru, was the one would would be burned in the end. He just knew it.

The truth was, Kaoru was well aware that he had never dealt well with change and uncertainty either. But every time he was in a post-binge or a post-vomit stupor, Kaoru saw a future with his brother as the weight of the ever-shifting world fell away. The fact that his habit kept him slim and indistinguishable from his twin despite a sweet tooth to rival Honey's was only icing on the cake. It had started easily enough: when he was sick one day, and had thrown up all his fluids, he saw a future that he had glimpsed at other times too, but this time unmarred by crushing, soul-sucking reason: that it would never happen, that those sorts of things didn't happen, that it was wrong as could be. That Hikaru could and would one day move on without him, and that it was all just-hah!-a phase. And Kaoru knew it would only be healthy for Hikaru to one day move on.

But they made him so happy, the things he saw in that eternal sunshine of the electrolyte-starved mind. Hikaru and Kaoru going to the movies. Hikaru and Kaoru holding hands. Hikaru on one knee before Kaoru on a seaside terrace at sunset. Hikaru and Kaoru standing up in white suits before their friends and family, a sight not unlike one of those bizarre weddings where a woman left too long on the shelf pronounces her vows to a mirror. Hikaru and Kaoru adopting a child and growing old together. These dreams had grown out from he knew not where, and he had made every effort to stuff them back in. Hikaru lived in the moment, and had never thought things through. If he said he loved, for all intents and purposes he might have meant that he loved touching Kaoru and toying with his body, or that he loved sharing a popsickle with him on a summer day. After all, oftentimes what Hikaru said was null and void by the next day. When it came down to it, the damage Kaoru did to his body eating until his insides hurt and his mind was numb, followed by a punch to the gut and gagging himself half to death did not hurt nearly as much as the fear that when their limbs entwined in bed, Hikaru knew not what he did. It never hurt when he was WITH Hikaru-his brother's touch was magical, an antidote second in strength to the purging alone-but it always hurt tenfold once the doubts caught up with him again. He could hold them off for a month or a year, but the doubts always came back. And then again, he deserved worse pain than that. It hurt inside, but that was not enough. He deserved real, physical pain. To be gutted and clubbed to death, daily. Because what sort of sicko desired to marry his brother, anyway?

"Get up, Hikaru. You're making a fool of yourself."

"I'll polish the floor with my knees if I want to, Kaoru."

"I don't think you know what love is, and I want you to quit saying it."

"How can I not know?!"

"It's all one big game to you, isn't? Your whole life's a game-OUR whole life's a game. But I don't want to play anymore." He hadn't wanted to say it, and his lips did not feel like his own when he formed the words.

"What are you talking about?"

"This whole brotherly love thing."

It took a few seconds for Hikaru to process the words.

"No…."

Hikaru jumped up and flew to the window. Anywhere where he could be facing away from that pale, dispassionate mirror looking back at him. Yet a faint Kaoru still gazed back at him from a pane of the french window, his face surrounded by flowers.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no."

He doesn't believe me. He doesn't trust me. My own brother doesn't trust me.

Hikaru spun around on his heel.

"What did I do wrong?" He crossed the room again in two steps and grabbed his brother by the shoulders, forcing him to his feet and looking him square in the eyes. "Who the hell are you and what did you to do my Kaoru, you bulimic piece of shit?!"

"Yeah, okay, I'm REALLY feeling the love now." Kaoru made a half-hearted effort to scoff. "Say that again, loverboy. It gets me so hot."

Hikaru felt his chest breaking, his voice along with it. He let his brother sag in his arms and pulled him close, pressing a cheek he hadn't noticed become moist into the auburn mop of hair. He heard Kaoru's heart beat unsteadily.

"Damn you, Kaoru. Fuck me… Fuck ME… Fuck me drunk…"

This, this is all I have, thought Hikaru, digging his fingers deeper into his brother's back. This damn shell. He doesn't believe me. My own twin brother doesn't believe me.

"It's not your fault, Hikaru."

Hikaru sat them both down and took his brother's chin firmly in his hands.

"I'll make you believe me, Kaoru. I'll make this go away. You'll see. I won't let you go, no matter how much you might think you want it."

Kaoru drew a ragged breath. His brother knew exactly which buttons to push to make him forget he had bones. Two molten-lava eyes looked at him, and molten was suddenly how he felt. Hikaru, that devil, certainly had a way of gazing at him as if nothing else existed. The fingers molded over his chin made him all skin-he felt his back arch, his shoulders and neck fall back, his tongue and mouth turn to mush.

"Hi-ka-ru…"

Fuck ME, he thought. He would pay for it later, but it was alright. He would have sold his soul for it at that moment.

Were it in fact any later, it might have been the start of the most scorching of their nights together yet. They might have ended up rolling on the floor, and that elephant vase their mother had picked out for their last birthday might have ended up in pieces.

...

Now that she thought about it, there was that one time, when she'd picked up one of the twins and lifted him onto her knee. She'd thought he was a little heavier than the other, and knowing how much they already enjoyed the fact that no one could tell them apart, she thought she'd one-up them. It never hurt to let children know who was boss.

"Oh, wow, you're the HEAVY twin, Kaoru," she cooed. "Now I'll always know how to tell you two apart. But it'll be our little secret-I won't let anybody else touch my special little boys."

Kaoru had screwed up his face and maintained that she was wrong-that he simply hadn't gone potty yet that day. Shortly after, she felt something warm soaking through her stockings as her son blew delighted spit bubbles with abandon.

Then again, she could not be sure that it HAD been Kaoru. Until they had learned their alphabet and got wise to the fact, Mrs. H dressed her sons in clothes that said either "H" or "K", depending on the twin. But even then, between the hired help and the various aunts who liked to lend a hand, mixups abounded.

Besides, who knew if they could remember that far back. And besides that one brief lapse in judgment, she was fairly sure she'd always been an excellent mother.

"Boys-" She pushed the door to Kaoru's bedroom. The twins jumped.

She always said "boys" when coming into a room where she knew at least one of them could be found. She was a woman who liked to cover her bases.

"Ever heard of knocking, mom?"

"Young man, may I remind you that while you live under my roof, and while I'm paying for your eating disorder holiday with your brother, it is my right to come and go as I please? Kaoru, we can leave for the States within the week. Don't worry about packing. Hikaru, you'll need some coaching first, of course, and Ophelia has kindly offered to help tomorrow evening at seven."

"Right, mom. Though just so you know, I'll do it, but I don't have to like it. In fact, I find the whole idea horribly offensive, including the fact that you're shipping us off to some trust fund schizo prison so this can all go away."

"The jury will note that for the record. And just so you know-"

"I swear, it's like you're trying to punish us. We didn't DO anything."

"-I'll ship you off to boot camp in Hokkaido, too, if you don't learn more respect."

"You're just afraid Kaoru's going to vomit all over the designer towels in the bathroom at one of your schmancy charity balls and embarrass the family. He's your SON, he's unwell, and you threaten and manipulate him. Who does that?!"

Mrs. H faced down the barrage unfazed.

"Hikaru, come on." Kaoru placed his hand on his brother's sleeve. "Don't take it out on mom. She's doing her best."

"Her best, my arse."

"Tut-tut, language." Mrs. H spun around on a kitten heel, indicating that the conversation was over. Hikaru glared at her receding back. Kaoru wrapped his arms around his brother's shoulders from behind.

"Let's go to sleep, Hikaru."

"Good idea." The older twin's jaw was still twitching.

They settled under the covers, Hikaru's arms around Kaoru, their faces nose to nose, a sheet over both their heads against the darkness. It was the perfect position for talking, dreaming, and scheming together, as they had done nearly every night of their lives. They lay there for a long moment.

"Let's not fight any more like that."

"Okay."

"All we have is each other."

"Okay. But promise you'll try and be nicer to mom, Hikaru. Give her time. She likes to make assurance triple-sure before she lets anything bother her."

"I'll try. I only wish we didn't have to cut her eternal slack just because we've had the dubious pleasure of living in her oven for nine months."

"It WAS pretty cramped in there, and the rent WAS too damn high. So maybe you're right, Hika-chan."

"I'm always right, Kao-chan."

Their lips spread into simultaneous smiles as they thought of Honey.

"Speaking of, what will we tell the Host Club, Kao-chan?" Hikaru ran his fingers over the side of Kaoru's face and gave his cheek a small pinch.

"Do we need to tell them anything? It's summer after all."

"I would think so. That time Tamaki thought Haruhi had been kidnapped by gypsies when he couldn't reach her at home, he put up quite a stink."

"Yeah, he woke us at 6 a.m. Unforgivable."

"SHE'S GONE! MY BELOVED DAUGHTER IS GONE! QUICK, CALL THE POLICE! WE MUST REQUEST AN URGENT DEPLOYMENT OF THE SDF!"

"That's the worst imitation of Tamaki I ever heard. You gotta put more of that fake samurai chutzpah into it."

"Made you smile, though." Hikaru chuckled, cupping his brother's chin and forcing the corners of his mouth even farther upward.

"Seriously, though, I don't see Tamaki calling the SDF just because our cell phones are out of range. Mom will probably come up with something the servants will be telling everyone who calls here, and after all, we're not commoners without passports. We go to exotic places all the time."

"Still, Kyoya always gets to the bottom of things, and Tamaki's been taking the show on the road a lot lately. He might get it into his head to drop in on us."

"Or give us the most unnecessary sendoff that feverish brain of his can come up with."

"In fact, I'd say if anyone belongs in a trust fund schizo prison, it's Tamaki."

"My thoughts exactly, Hika-chan. Lock 'im up and throw away the key."

Hikaru laughed suddenly, pulling his brother closer and sucking in a large mouthful of his neck. "You know, Kao-chan, you're much cuter than Honey. You're so cute I might want to marry you one day, so you can be all mine and I can eat you up."

Kaoru closed his eyes. Before three hours were up and Hikaru had exhausted himself, the younger Hitachiin would be having a 2 am cake party that had would not end as Honey's did.


	3. For a Bottle of Umeshu

"Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut!"

The twins' mother stood in the middle of her library, legs statuesque, hips thrust jauntily to the side. The kitten heels had been replaced by black and white calfskin Oxfords nearly five inches tall. At 5'5, Mrs. Hitachiin was not the shortest woman, and everyone with the possible exception of Hikaru lived in awe of her already. But when she had company she still liked to be the most imposing person in the room-even if the company was only a girlfriend from high school. The only things missing were cameras and sound equipment, and she may have been scolding the models in a new ad for perfume.

"Young man, I'll understand if you give up your future running my company and pursue a career in Kabuki theatre, but this is not the time or place to practice your audition! If you don't start taking this seriously, I will put you out of this house and have you camping with the hungover salarymen in Shinjuku station."

"Mom, you've been threatening me with that for years. You ought to mix up your repertoire."

"You CAN'T keep looking up and to the left, Hikaru. They'll know you're lying. If you're going to look up, look to the right. Right - recall, left - lie. And don't give up the game so fast. Nobody with an ED will tell you straight-up 'I binge and here's a conveniently Freudian explanation.' "

Hikaru knotted his eyebrows and slumped back into his armchair. By consensus, it was decided that he would be a secret binger who exercised to the point of being hospitalized for exhaustion. So far, so good, assuming hospital records could be fabricated. He knew how to eat, and he knew how to exercise, and ever since Project Trust Find Schizo Prison had gone into effect, eat and exercise was what he did, all day every day. It was not a very good life, but he could handle it. The hardest part was talking the talk. He'd though about asking Kaoru for notes, but he worried his brother was still be too fragile, so he had kept their conversations and their petting sessions light.

"Let's try that again," said the woman sitting opposite Hikaru. She had not batted an eye at Mrs. Hitachiin's tirade, as she knew the twins' mother only too well. She happened to know that Yuzuha only let fly the full eloquence of her wrath at those whom she considered her own, and a cut above everyone else. And she was not the only one who knew it, either. There was a girl in their year back at Ouran who had run around in ecstasy for weeks, telling anyone who would listen that Yuzuha Hitachiin had not only insulted but also SLAPPED her, and how amazing it had been. In certain circles, it was still considered a badge of honor to be verbally abused by the Great Yuzuha.

"Yes, do," Yuzuha said, settling in the wide, tomato-red upholstered chair behind her desk and folding her arms, "And if I see 'acting' like that again, I will chop off your fingers and send you to Iraq."

She smiled so wide it all but cracked her face in two. Nobody accused the Great Yuzuha of being fresh out of ideas. Nobody.

Hikaru looked up at their guest for the evening. Ophelia's real name was Tomo'e Honda (THAT Honda), and she was everything his mother might have been if she had toed the line a little more often. Small and demure, her curves were covered with the delicate fluff of her 40-some years, and she sat on the front half of her chair, back and legs straight, knees and ankles together. Her voice was too mezzo for her body, but not in a jarring way. She wore a pale green two piece suit, white stockings, white gloves, and white pumps. When she put her cup down, she put her pinkie on the coffee table first, and her face reminded Hikaru of the women in Ukiyo-e-the Pictures of the Floating World. Her face, though perfect, had nothing to snag the memory, and Hikaru could not be sure that if he looked away he would've remembered what she looked like. But when he did look at at her, he felt the world around them growing calm, warm, and soft. Her perfume had a touch of baby powder, a smell that had always made him a little sad. He caught himself thinking that he wouldn't have minded a mother like her.

"Tell me about yourself."

"Uh…." Hikaru fidgeted, looking down. It was safer than looking up and in the wrong direction, he had decided. "I'm a twin. The older twin. I'm from Tokyo, and I go to Ouran Academy. My mom's a designer and my dad's in IT."

"And what brings you here today?"

"I don't know." Hah.

"What do you think?"

"It's in my chart, isn't it?" That's it, try the difficult teenager approach.

"I want to hear it from you."

"Why?"

"I want to get a sense of how YOU see the situation."

Hikaru held his tongue for what he through was a respectably long pause.

"I really don't think there's anything wrong with what I'm doing."

Mrs. Honda smiled, and Hikaru had to bite his tongue. She seemed like the sort of person who could change the mood in a room with just her presence. He fought the sudden urge to tell her everything. The woman ought to have been recruited by the SDF to be used as living truth serum.

"I never said there was anything wrong with it," she said.

Mrs. Honda had explained, earlier, all the classic reasons people why had unhealthy relationships with food. She had explained it all coolly and matter-of-factly, though not without a touch of affection, as if she was describing the paintings on exhibit at a museum. There were four basic models of how upbringing bred eating disorders, and there were four types of families. Achievement-oriented families, families where you were told who and what you were, families with no boundaries, and families that were dead. Food was a way of coping, of rebellion, and of forgetting the shame and alienation that ran through all four dynamics. Hikaru recognized a little of his mother in all the descriptions, but after a while he had wanted to scream,"I don't want to hear all this theory, I want to hear about YOU." He'd vainly hoped that talking to someone who had been there would help him better understand his brother. But so far, the true story of Mrs. Honda had not materialized. That was perhaps to be expected. Mrs. Honda was like a work of art in more ways than one: not a person but a function, she existed only to whatever end others needed her.

"What are you thinking about, Hikaru?"

Before he could answer, the door opened, and Kaoru stepped into the room. Hikaru stood up, as if jolted by lightning. His brother was wearing a sleeveless hoodie, open in the front to expose both his collar bones. Something about those collar bones, together with the thin, delicate arms thickening into deltoids and the defenseless whiteness of the flesh always made Hikaru want to be alone with him. Yuzuha took her eyes off the roleplaying duo and glanced at Kaoru as well.

"Hello, son. How was the dinner-date with Daddy?"

"Good." It had been. The twins always enjoyed spending time with their father. He was an ordinary man and an ordinary dad in the best of ways: a person of few, well-chosen words who preferred to wait and to listen. Despite years of living in Yuzuha's world, he still wore skinny black ties and occasionally ate at diners that served ramen and curry-rice. The boys saw him even more rarely than they saw their mother, as he was now in charge of all IT operations for the company, but when he did spend time with his sons, they wished the day would never end. Things were easy with their dad. When they were little, he would put them on his shoulders-one at a time, of course. These days, they talked politics and baseball. Sometimes it felt like there was no need to talk, so they didn't. They shared comfortable silences only men with a deep love for each other could.

"Someone tried to take a picture with me again. But otherwise it was okay."

"Oh, dear. Did Dad take you to one of his commoner joints again? Did you wear a hat?"

"No, he didn't, and yes, I did."

One of the dubious pleasures of living in Japan with the twins' coloring came when perfect strangers came up to them on the daily, mistook them for a Western celebrities, and asked (for the most part very politely, of course) if they could touch their hair and take their picture. To date, the most precious reason was given by a group of schoolgirls who said it would help them on exams. The phenomenon, unfortunately, drove Yuzuha crazy. She considered her looks and that of her sons a company trademark, and had plans to make the twins the faces of an ad campaign, already in the planning stages under the working title "HIT". It would be their official initiation into the world of high fashion, the beginning of their grooming as her heirs, and a dramatic unveiling of her proudest creations. The thought of amateur photos of her boys floating around in handheld cameras and cell phones all over the country offended her nearly as much as seeing a knockoff version of one of her handbags. To that end, in addition to a fleet of cars with windows tinted to twice the legal limit, she had agreements with all media outlets worldwide to never publish the twins' likenesses. She also employed a dedicated force of tech monkeys who scoured the internet for photos posted by both unknowing and especially intrepid bloggers, and just as many lawyers ready to write subpoenas. No one was safe: even Kyoya had received a nastygram once. Those who considered themselves initiated whispered that there was a darker reason for Yuzuha's machinations: namely, that the twins were not really their father's sons. The whisperers had a point - it was nobody's imagination that the twins' fiery hair, their milky skin, and their almond eyes were far too Western to have been produced by two Japanese-even if one of them WAS Yuzuha. A strong contender for the twins' paternity was Yves Saint Laurent, a family friend and Yuzuha's favorite collaborator for many years. But paternity tests were only as good as the records one kept, and where Yuzuha was concerned records were always immaculate.

"Alright. Step into my office. I want you to tell me everything you can remember. It might be somebody especially persistent-or someone especially out to step on my toes."

Yuzuha ushered Kaoru through the door to her private study, and closed it behind them. Mrs. Honda and Hikaru were alone, and Hikaru breathed a sigh. Mrs. Honda wore a small, Noh-mask smile, which did not change when the door shut behind her friend.

"I'm just having a hard time tying it all to food and body image, you know? It's just not me, and I'm not very good at lying when it comes to… serious things." In all truth, he couldn't blame his mother for comparing his acting to Kabuki, the theatre of the absurd. It WAS.

Mrs. Honda stirred her tea. Hikaru noticed she had not touched the plate of biscuits that stood between them. Then again, she had not touched her tea either-not with her lips, anyway.

"I think I know how to make this easier," Mrs. Honda said. "Don't talk about food. Talk about your mother. But instead of saying the word mother, say food."

"Uh. Alright…"

"Tell me how food makes you feel."

"I…" He paused. "I… love… food," Hikaru formed the words uncertainly, like a child turning the sounds of a foreign language over and over with his tongue. "It's… food, after all. Everyone loves their, uh… food. It's only natural. But food's always… making me feel bad."

"How so?"

"Food hurts me. And I can't help but see it as the enemy sometimes. That's why I fight back. I'm pretty impulsive, I guess."

Hikaru sighed and looked down at his hands. Suddenly, his shoulders were feeling less tense. The words were starting to come faster now that he wasn't really lying. He found himself saying things he had admitted to only to Kaoru, and even then in not so many words.

"I wish I could have a normal relationship with… food. Like everyone else does. I look around me and I think-how do they do it? I don't know where I've gone wrong."

"See, doesn't that feel better?" said Mrs. Honda. She took a small sip of tea, and her Noh smile spread just a little wider. "Well done, Hikaru."

…."You know, I hate it when those idiots harass you in public too. And it drives me crazy to think what they might be doing with those pictures in private. But I'm kind of glad someone tried to take your picture today."

They were walking back to their room, having finally finished listening to detailed instructions concerning the following morning, and said goodnight to their mother and Mrs. Honda.

Kaoru chuckled. "It's a Sisyphean effort, you know. In this day and age, how can you possibly keep track of an image?"

"You're the good son, though. You actually try and help. I don't think I tell you often enough how much I respect you for actually keeping your cool with that woman."

"It's not always worth it to try and shatter someone's illusions. I try to keep the peace."

Hikaru smiled and hugged his brother around the shoulders. His good, kind, little brother. The man he sometimes so wished he could be.

"At any rate, you got mom out of the room. Which helped me make a bit of a breakthrough."

"Oh?"

"It's never really about food."

"No, you're right, it's not."

"I mean, I knew that. Mrs. Honda explained that to me about a thousand times, but I don't think I really GOT it until now. Food's more of a…metaphor."

"It can be."

"Is it for you?"

"Yes and no. It's more of a… vehicle. A way to getting somewhere. But what helped you make your breakthrough?" Kaoru turned to his brother, and Hikaru noticed he was wearing his sweet, blank-slate, 'I'm-listening-and-nothing-else-exists' face, not unlike Mrs. Honda's Noh mask. Except Hikaru was fairly certain that Kaoru's was genuine. Both their father and Kaoru had the same gift for waiting, listening and being truly interested instead of simply pretending.

"She told me to substitute the word 'food' for the word 'mother'. It was kind of amazing, actually. And now I think that even though I don't technically have a condition, I could probably use some time apart from… food to figure some things out."

Kaoru reached out and gave his brother's forearm a squeeze. "That sounds like a great idea. To be honest, it stresses me out when you guys don't get along."

"Is that why you-?" Hikaru grabbed his brother's arm and faced him briskly, stopping just short of the door to their bedroom.

"No, that's not it-and it's not your fault," the younger brother added quickly. "It's just that… we're not like other kids. We can't go to university, move away, and talk to our parents every other week on the phone for the rest of our lives. You'll be taking over mom's company, and you'll be working closely with her for many years before you replace her. I don't want you to be miserable. She is the way she is at work too, you know, and I think it's a little too late to change her."

"That's true, but you'll be there too," Hikaru smiled brightly. "There's no way I could be miserable if you're around." He reached out to touch his brother's cheek, sliding his finger over a dimple.

"I'll definitely be around to help-if you'll want me to, of course. But what if something happens? What if I won't be able to be a buffer forever?" And what if I don't want to?-he'd wanted to add, but bit his tongue. He could definitely see himself growing exhausted, if not in two years, then in five, or ten, or fifteen.

"Kaoru-NO. Don't say things like that," Hikaru grabbed his brother by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. Kaoru was still in his gentle zen listening mode, which was encouraging. "You'll make it out of this just fine, you hear me?"

"What I mean is, you can't predict the future. Things change, you know, and you've got to be ready. I think about that every minute of every day-things changing."

"Come off it… Really?" Things change, he thought, but you and me, together-that won't change. Not if I have anything to say about it. "Every minute of every day?" The back of his hand was back to tracing the line of his twin's jaw, and he let his finger pause over his brother's chin. "You worry too much, sweet brother. If you keep on like that you'll get all gray and bald and hypertensive by university. Not that I'll love you any less."

"Well, between the two of us someone's gotta think about the future. And you're pretty hopeless on that front." Kaoru laughed in spite of himself. Hikaru was remarkably… refreshing at times. He could make even the most serious discussion devolve into giggles in a matter of seconds. The younger twin could not help but love that about his brother. Sometimes it infuriated him, but more often than not it was just what he needed.

"Hopeless-that I am. Hopelessly enamored and guilty as charged." Hikaru clicked his heels, mimed a small bow, and opened the door, gesturing with a flourish. "After you, milady." Kaoru passed inside, still smiling. A blush had painted his cheek, and Hikaru caught a hint of the cologne his brother was wearing. It smelled of clean sheets, and conjured up visions of Kaoru in a just-made bed, wearing nothing but a smile.

"You know, Kaoru," said Hikaru, pushing his brother playfully in the chest once they were inside. "It's our last night at home, and who knows what our living situation will be like when we get there."

Words couldn't describe how happy the older twin was that he and his brother were talking again, after four days of sweet nothings on his side and Kaoru simply smiling back nine times out of ten. Their nights, too, had been quiet on account of Hikaru's exhaustion: he spent the bulk of his days at the gym getting into character. But he always fell a little more in love with Kaoru when the latter waxed fatalistic, looking at something a thousand miles away and talking about the future as if moments present, past, and yet-to-come were one and the same. His brother looked so fragile, so not-of-this-world whenever he did so. It made Hikaru eager to know what other beautifully vague, ridiculous thoughts made their home in that head of his. It made him want to grab his hands and hang onto every word he said, and stay that way for hours. The only problem was, it also very quickly made him want to take him to bed. He kissed up Kaoru's neck, overcome. The scent of cologne, together with Kaoru's own skin, was putting terrible images in his mind, but oh, to stop would have been unthinkable.

"Let's hit a home run, brother. Let's hit one right out of the park," he whispered. His lips were just over Kaoru's earlobe.

"Hikaru… I think we need to talk about this first…" Kaoru felt his legs failing him, and he sunk slowly onto the bed, trying his utmost to remain upright.

"What's there to talk about? I feel like that's the one thing we DON'T need to talk about."

Kaoru swallowed, his cheeks burning. His pupils had probably dilated in spite of his best efforts to keep his cool, and he hated himself for it. Hikaru climbed on all fours onto the bed, and slid one knee between Kaoru's legs. His hand was on the younger twin's chest, their faces inches from each other. He felt a nipple hardening under the sleeveless hoodie, and pushed Kaoru backwards a little more insistently.

"We'll never be the same once we take that step, Hikaru."

"Baloney. No one cares for one another more than we do. No one knows each other better. And just in case you're worried," he winked, "I'm not a 'wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am' kind of guy. Not with you, anyway. I promise I'll make breakfast and everything."

Hikaru smiled wider when he noticed for the umpteenth time yet another reason why he knew no one ever looked at the twins closely enough. Both had a single small freckle on their irises, like a tea leaf that had slipped furtively into an otherwise perfect cup. Hikaru's was on the right, and Kaoru's was on the left.

"So why do we need to go there at all?"

"Why not?" Hikaru made a move to cup his brother's chin, but Kaoru grabbed his arm.

"Because. I want to know where we stand." Once again, it was one of the rare moments when he spoke without thinking. The words just about flew out of his mouth, and he felt relief, like the momentary lightness sensed when stepping off a precipice.

"What do you mean?" Hikaru sat back on his haunches, his brow furrowing.

Splat.

"Well…" Kaoru took advantage of his brother's confusion and straightened up. "Wouldn't you be happier in the long run with, say, Haruhi?"

"Haruhi? Is this what this is all about?"

"Well, no, but you and her would make a little more sense, for one…"

"We had one date, and you're the one who asked her."

Kaoru stared at his brother reproachfully.

"Ok, fine. I do think Haruhi is a very special person. Like you said-she showed us that there weren't just two types of people, 'us' and 'everybody else.' That there was a whole world of connections to be made out there. I care about Haruhi, and as a red-blooded teenage boy I probably wouldn't mind seeing her in bunny cosplay. But, Kaoru, you're the one. I'm even more sure of that now."

Much like Kaoru, Hikaru too was capable of looking at the person across from him as if the world did not exist. And Kaoru knew he would be lost if he didn't think fast.

"You're sure? You're 16."

"Sixteen's plenty old enough to know who and what you want." Hikaru bit his lip. If it was anyone else but his brother, he might have been angrier, but instead he reached a hand out to Kaoru's cheek and did his best not to cry. Perhaps he was better off trying to reign his hormones in a bit, lest his brother assume that a roll in the hay was really all he wanted.

Kaoru sighed, and reached out his hand to clasp his brother's. "We'll get there in time, alright?"

Hikaru nodded after a long moment, and his lips suddenly burst into a smile. "Alright. But just so you know, you're killing me, you little sex pixie. First degree, cold-blooded murder. Right here." He pointed at the middle of his chest.

"Well! If Sicko-san is still interested in doing something illegal, I might have an even better idea."

"What could be better?"

Kaoru slid off the bed and made his way to a bookshelf. Just to the left of it, and to the right of a doorway hung an unassuming framed watercolor. Kaoru pressed his palm over the glass, and the doors of a secret mini bar slid open with a chime. At the moment, its only contents were a bottle of Umeshu, a rag-tag crew of crystal tumblers, and a bouquet of long toothpicks, but it looked like it could house enough liquor to water an adult cocktail party.

"NO. YOU DIDN'T. Not only are you a bulimic mother-shtupper, but you're a secret alcoholic."

"AND a drug addict. AND a criminal. There's so much you still don't know about me, brother, so KANPAI!" Kaoru grinned, and bounded back to the bed. "Two drinks apiece at most, just as a nightcap-okay? We've got an early start tomorrow."

He poured his brother a generous shot and handed him the glass, making sure they just missed touching fingers. Hikaru took a long swallow of the plum wine, closing his eyes as he savored the syrupy liquid on his tongue-just the right amount of sweet, with hardly a burn.

"Oh, Kaoru, this tastes almost as good as you do…"

Kaoru looked up. While his brother was enjoying his drink, he had taken a small sip of his, and poured the rest back into the bottle-praise be to God, the Umeshu had come in a cross between a bottle and a jar for preserves. Hikaru opened his eyes to find Kaoru consuming one of the pickled plums that came in the wine.

"Kaoru, you're dripping..."

The younger twin had already bitten into the fruit, and was mentally kicking himself for not having thought everything through.

"Here, let me help you."

Hikaru leaned over and ran his tongue over his brother's neck and under his chin. He felt the warmth of the Umeshu settle in tight, hot coils between his hips, and knew he was right back where he's started. The shape of his brother's long, alabaster neck, the taste of his skin, and the heady sweetness of the wine all conspired to addle his brain all but irreversibly. Having made his way up to Kaoru's lips, he bit into the other side of the pickled plum. Kaoru tried to pull away and bit the plum harder to detach his piece, but Hikaru was too fast for him. The twins' lips met, their mouths full of fruit and alcohol. For a moment, Hikaru had a vision of pushing his brother down, pinning his arms behind him, ripping off his clothes, and leaving no inch of skin untouched by lips still sticky with Umeshu. But no meant no. He wouldn't gain anything by it, and he'd lose just about everything. Yet it was still all he could do to let a thrashing Kaoru get free.

"A-another?"

"Another kiss?" Hikaru smiled sheepishly, half-hopeful, wiping the remnants of wine that were now streaming down his chin, too. "I'm sorry I made that one so rough. I'll be nicer, I promise."

"I meant another drink, silly." Kaoru was already pouring, head lowered to hide the fact that he was struggling to sound nonchalant.

"Only if I can drink it from your mouth."

Mayday.

It seemed he no longer had a choice. He would have to go full kamikaze.

"Your wish is my command." Kaoru took a large drag of the wine, folded his lips into a smile, and pressed his mouth against Hikaru's.

Twenty minutes later, the Umeshu had done its work splendidly. A drink and a half was all it took to push Hikaru over the edge after his long day of training. Kaoru had also somehow changed the subject-he couldn't remember how, but he would have shaken his own hand if he did. They ended up reminiscing about the time they were in Amsterdam, and their mother had taken them on an "enriching field trip" through the Red Light district at night. She'd dragged them along-both twelve and horrified-and chatted nonchalantly about this or that woman's odds of selling herself for the night. They agreed they were lucky their mother hadn't tried to buy them a prostitute. Hikaru had then regaled Kaoru with a few more bad Tamaki impressions, and was presently snoring peacefully atop the covers.

Crisis averted, Kaoru thought. But he looked down, and his hands were still shaking. The pickled plum had been a mistake indeed, though he couldn't say that he hadn't enjoyed it. It was getting harder and harder to resist his brother's advances, especially after the words "the one" had made him dream of sunsets, poppy fields, and wedding picnics. Sooner or later, he'd balk. Sooner or later, he'd get his heart broken. He could finish the bottle, he mused, but flying hungover on a private jet with his mother was not a prospect he relished. He downed three shots in quick succession, headed for the bathroom, and turned on the shower so Hikaru would have no chance of hearing him turn his stomach inside out.


	4. Welcome to Paradise

"We try not to turn anyone away, but as you might expect, we don't get a lot of young men in the eating disorder ward of Hazeltown. In fact, that ward doesn't even have separate male and female dorms, whereas all others do. So it's up to the both of you to be on your best behavior."

A night, a four-hour Cessna flight to Oahu, and a hour-long drive later, the twins had kissed their mother goodbye and were following a nurse named Miriam on a tour of their new home. As they practiced their Sunday-best English during the drive down Hawaii's only interstate highway, Hikaru had thought that Hawaii did not look too different from Japan. If you squinted just hard enough not to see the signs in English, the undulating contours of mountains covered in vegetation did not look too different from those of another set of volcanic islands in the Pacific. Oddly enough, it was the twins' first time in Hawaii. Their mother had always pooh-pooh'ed the islands as a snooze of a holiday destination-a place for commoners with little money and less imagination.

"Some of the patients have been here a while, and might get a little… antsy now that there are boys around. But it's our hope that time spent with members of the opposite sex who are going through the same thing might help them realize that eating disorders oftentimes transcend gender."

For a nurse, she sounds an awful lot like a professor, Hikaru thought, thanking his lucky stars that he and Kaoru had had a British au pair and were drilled in English grammar every day on top of their schoolwork.

"…Of course, socialization is key to your recovery as well. But it goes without saying that any contact of an excessively… friendly nature is discouraged and may prove harmful to everyone's progress."

Aside from her odd way of talking, the nurse was a genial enough woman, with straw-colored hair and a suntanned face that had once been pretty. The softness of her smiles suggested she had children, and her accent was Southern, as far as the twins could ascertain based on their knowledge of American cinema.

Hazeltown itself, too, was pleasant enough. The hospital was a sprawling, estate-style building in French colonial style that stood in the middle of a former plantation. The twins learned that the grounds also spanned a portion of rain forest preserve, a private beach, a park, and stables ("Stables?!" thought Hikaru, and suppressed a whistle). Residents were allowed to schedule supervised visits to any of those places. The twins learned, too, that the hospital also had a wing for people with substance abuse problems, and another for people on suicide watch. The ward dedicated to eating disorders had 15 residents.

The halls of the building were airy, with high ceilings that helped conserve the chill. But the door that led to the South Wing seemed out of place in an early 20th century mansion. Not only was it made of metal, it slammed behind them with a whirr not unlike that of a safe deposit box. The nurse smiled and said hello to two of her colleagues, who sat in a booth with perimeter windows that had been set up in the middle of the common room-a converted ballroom furnished with Edwardian furniture. Doors to what looked like bedrooms and short hallways stretched out along one side of the hall. A second nurse joined Miriam and asked Hikaru and Kaoru to surrender personal electronics, plastic bags, belts, drawstrings, shoelaces, pens, pencils, and chopsticks.

"Chopsticks?!" asked Hikaru, perplexed.

"You'd be surprised what can be done with chopsticks." Miriam's expression refused to elaborate.

As they were being issued hospital bracelets with thier names, birthdays, and patient record numbers, Kaoru caught sight of a sign on the door that said, "Keep closed to prevent evasion." The last word did not leave him feeling particularly encouraged.

And that was when they learned that there was to be no touching. In the spirit of excessively friendly contact being discouraged, close physical contact was not allowed in the common areas-a rule that tacitly extended to the bedrooms as well. Doors to all rooms had to remain open to at least 45 degrees between wake-up and lights out. Those not assigned to a room could only visit for 30 minutes at a time, in groups no more than three at a time, and lights could not be turned off.

The only encouraging part was that Hikaru and Kaoru would still be roommates. But even then, the door had opened to reveal two narrow beds on opposite sides of the room, the door between them. Every morning, the nurse said, Reveille was at 6 a.m., which was when the patients got their blood drawn.

Kaoru started to cry.

"Are you okay?" Miriam's eyes shot to Kaoru's bracelet, but he was wiping away tears with his wrist and the part with the name had been turned away from her. She sighed and settled for not addressing him directly by name-it was probably clear enough who she was referring to.

"He will be."

"I'll give you two a moment. We'll get started on discussing your treatment plans soon, alright?" Miriam the professor was gone, replaced by Miriam the peppy, blonde, over-age camp counselor. Hikaru was almost sorry to see her gone.

Hikaru steered Kaoru into the room and sat him on the bed. Having made sure that the door was indeed open to the proper 45 degrees-this was facilitated by a traffic-yellow line on the floor-he sat next to his brother and broke the cardinal rule of the establishment.

"Come on, Kaoru, 6 a.m. might not be so bad." He did his best to make his voice sound upbeat. "I'm sure they have a correspondingly early lights out, too. Early to bed, early to rise: who knows, you might get better just from that."

The twins were both confirmed night owls, but Hikaru did in fact harbor a vague pipe dream where a version of himself he infinitely respected would go to bed by 9:45, wake up at 5, and do a lap around the garden before breakfast.

"And I'll bet you can go back to bed after they draw your blood. They always do stuff like that obscenely early in hospitals just because."

"No, that's not it," Kaoru squeezed the words out through the tears. It hadn't been so much the prospect of waking up at the crack of dawn but the separate beds that did him in. Although he always approached bedtime with a mix of dread and a breathless anticipation that later made him feel dirty, for better or for worse he had gotten used to being able to reach out and feel his brother sleeping next to him. Nothing made him feel safer or more secure. On the bright side, perhaps he would have to deal with less of Hikaru's pawing and begging for a while, and would not want to hurt himself nearly as often for the sickly-sweet gravy-and-porkchop thoughts he allowed into his mind. But the thought of sleeping alone made him feel like he'd been hit by a barrage of shrapnel that left a gaping hole in his heart.

"I wanna go home. I-miss our bed."

"Aw, Kaoru." Hikaru had to admit his brother had a point there, as he had been doing his best to repress very similar thoughts. "I know exactly how you feel."

"But look," the older twin jumped up. "I'll bet we can still hold hands across the gap between the beds. Let's give it a try."

Hikaru helped his brother stretch out on the olive-green bedspread, then lay down on the bed opposite, close to the edge. He stared at the ceiling and wondered how odd it was that their room was a small square with a single french window, bolted shut and paved with frosted glass, but the walls seemed to continue upwards forever. The ceiling bore a design he could hardly make out, and the the dry wall screen that separated their shower and toilet from the living space did not reach to even a third of the ceiling's height.

Their fingers nearly connected.

Hikaru was snapped from his reverie by a knock on the door-a formality, because it was open. Three girls stood on the threshold, eyeing them both with ill-concealed curiosity.

"Hi," said the apparent leader, a tallish girl with presence if not beauty, and strong brown hair pulled back in an oversized bun.

"Welcome, ladies." Hikaru said, getting to his feet, host-club smile at the ready.

"Come in, have a seat," said Kaoru, getting up as well and making a small bow to conceal the fact that his eyes were still not quite dry.

"I'd ask you to excuse the mess," said Hikaru, smoothing the bedspreads, "But we're not allowed that many belongings."

"…Aand, they're gentlemen!" The girls tittered. The leader made her way to the space that had been indicated for them.

"My name is Manny," she stuck out her hand, expecting it to be shaken, but Hikaru took it and brought it to his lips.

"Pleased to meet you, Manny. Is that short for something?"

"Manchester," she spoke with a mid-atlantic accent in a manner that Hikaru thought bespoke her nickname, but the blush that covered her cheek betrayed the fact that before she started starving herself, she had had the delicate complexion of an English rose. "My parents played a cruel joke when they named me. They must've wanted me to spend my life getting beat up by Westham fans." She pulled her hand away and gestured at the other two girls. "These are my friends Gaby and Griffin, or Gabs and Gif." Gaby was a petite Latina with a sharp, proud chin, and Gif had the elfin face and willow curls of a wood-nymph. "We're the welcome wagon. There are more of us, but we're only allowed to visit the boys' room in groups of three."

"So what are your names? Tell us about yourself," said Gaby.

"Well, I'm Hikaru…"

"And I'm Kaoru."

"…Or maybe it's the other way around!" they said in unison, beaming.

Kaoru sat down on the bed next to Manny, and Hikaru plopped between Gaby and Gif on the bed opposite.

"So are you models?" asked Gaby. "You look like models."

"Yeah, there's a rumor that you're been in skincare ads. In Japan," Gif chimed in. She had an airy voice to match her looks, and Hikaru smiled at her.

"No, not really," he said, laughing.

She looked down quickly.

"Our mom is in the fashion business, though. And we are from Japan," Kaoru explained.

"If you're from Japan, why... do you have red hair? And hazel eyes?"

"GIF!" Manny gasped, her voice not a little like a whip-crack. "You can't just ask someone something like that!"

Hikaru and Kaoru looked at each other and exploded in laughter.

"Ohh, man, if we had a dollar for every time someone asked us stuff like that back at home…"

"We'd buy out mom's company and lock her up in here!"

"Aaand, they're funny!" the girls exclaimed, joining in the laughter.

Gaby was the first to recover from her paroxysm of giggles. "Ok, let's cut to the chase. Are you guys gay?"

"GABS, you can't just ask someone if they're gay."

"Well, I wanna know! My time if valuable! Plus, Margo and I havemoney riding on the answer."

Hikaru's shining host club smile spread into one that was even wider.

"No, we're not gay-per se," said Hikaru.

"Per se?" Gabs raised an eyebrow.

"We're bi," Kaoru put in quickly.

"Yes," said Hikaru. "Why limit yourself? Two loves are better than one."

"Here, here!" laughed Manny, putting her arm around the boy next to her.

...

The news that the new boys were perfect gentlemen, "oh-so-cute," and "seriously hot" - though a bit on the heroin-chic side, Gaby was quick to add - was all over the ward in five minutes flat. Over the course of that day, Hikaru and Kaoru went on to learn more about the inhabitants of Hazeltown's South Wing.

Manny and Gaby occupied the two rooms on either side of the Hitachiins. The two were thick as thieves, and had been roommates initially, but living together had made them fight so bitterly that the staff was forced to intervene. Both lived alone now, and their friendship had gone back to being relatively harmonious. Another room was occupied by Gif and Shar. The latter was in a similar boat to Hikaru and Kaoru-namely, fresh off the boat, but from Hong Kong. Her hair showed evidence of having been dyed too many times, and she wore the same doll-like gyaru ensemble daily, as everyone was allowed to keep the outfit they came in. Additional sets of pajamas and daytime scrubs were provided, but she refused to put them on except on days when the nurses managed to convince her to send the gyaru getup to the cleaners. She had also refused to give up her makeup and false eyelashes, and applied them every day. Both Gif and Shar spoke little, and when they did, they had a tendency to say things that were either really off the mark, or really profound. They could often be seen sitting together, head to head over a stash of food, lost in rituals known only to them. From afar, they could have easily been mistaken for one another, as they had similar builds, similar skin color, and similar hair styles, though one was Chinese and the other white. Both were self-described food hoarders, were allowed to eat in private as per doctor's orders, and did not let anyone in their room except Miriam.

Melodie was an Asian girl who had reputedly not spoken a word to anyone since she arrived, except to yell at the nurses and shout obscenities into the phone. Befitting her name, she was only ever seen playing the piano, and occasionally heard composing bloodcurdling music on the guitar. When Hikaru and Kaoru once again were joined by Miriam for a turn around the in-house facilities, they found Melodie in the music room pounding out Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto as if the keyboard was single-handedly responsible for kiling every member of her family.

Margo was the oldest on the ward at 34, severely underweight and an alcoholic. Her arm was in a sling, and after meeting the boys she excused herself around a corner.

"Her husband owns a distillery, can you imagine?" Manny was wistful. "But the two of them are so cute. She always puts on her makeup before he comes to visit her, and says always she doesn't know where she'd be if not for him. Oh, hey…"

She motioned the boys over to another duo of girls, who lounged on a long couch like worshippers of a non-existent sun, both filing their nails. Sammie looked to be about twelve, and was a Barbie, with blonde hair ironed straight, ski-jump nose, healthy tan, and what Hikaru could have sworn were-incongruously-breast implants. Kim was over six feet tall, and possessed hazel eyes that looked all the brighter against her olive skin. She wore a Juicy velour track suit, and nursed a glass of Coke that had gone flat. An abandoned game of Clue lay on a coffee table between them.

Hikaru picked up the box the game came in and raised an eyebrow. The words "EVERYTHING I TOUCH TURNS TO SHIT" had been carved into the cardboard with what seemed like desperate force, and somebody had gone over the letters several times in pen.

"Oh, that's Joan," said Kim, taking a languid sip of Coke through the straw and releasing nearly all of it back into the glass. "She does that to everything." She gestured around her. "She writes it on the walls, and on the curtains. They can barely keep up cleaning up after her. They tried to take her pens away, but she nearly bashed her head open."

"That was BEFORE the no pens and no chopsticks rule," Sammie put in helpfully, smiling. Even her voice seemed to belong to a Miss America contestant. "They still make an exception for her."

"Seriously, what did happen with the chopsticks?" asked Kaoru.

"Some chick-not here, I think it was in the suicide ward-she stuck them up her nose until she died," Kim replied flatly. She took up the nail file again.

"AND then there's Helen," added Sammie brightly, noticing that Kaoru had started to look a little green around the gills. She pointed to a woman who had been stalking the length of the common room like a caged beast from the moment the twins arrived. "She's always drawing maps of the place trying to find a way to escape, Prison Break Style. But she uses a marker." She rummaged behind a cushion and extracted a crude opus of a building with three wings. "So far her plans are of poor quality, though."

As she spoke, Hikaru's hand had slowly begun to inch towards Kaoru's. If Sammie noticed, she didn't bat an eye. Her smile was blissful.

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it. We're all crazy here."

"Speak for yourself," said Kim, and held her fingers to the light to assess her handiwork.

…

"So what do you guys do, besides school?" asked Gaby over dinner.

"Again with the interview questions, Gabsmeister." Manny was stirring her soup, which had turned cold. Thus far, the boys' arrival was indeed affecting everyone's progress in that many of those who came to dinner felt they'd found something much more interesting to look at than their food. Even Gif and Shar were in attendance, though their trays were empty, and moody Helen had pulled up a chair. In fact, Manny was wrong: it wasn't an interview; it was a press-conference.

"Yeah, do you have any crazy hobbies? Everyone in Japan has crazy hobbies, right?" Sammie's smile seemed ready to burst from her face, and had narrowed her eyes to two little slits. "You guys don't lick each others' eyeballs, do you?"

"Well, I'm not sure if I'd consider this crazy, but at school we're part of an organization called a host club," Hikaru chuckled.

"What's a host club?"

"Oh! Well, a host club is a place where the school's handsomest boys with too much time on their hands entertain girls with equally as much free time!" Hikaru explained, tossing his hair and doing his best to mimic Tamaki's flamboyance.

The twins were certainly no longer in Kansas, however. The statement was met by blank stares.

"Entertain?" asked Kim. She looked at them quizzically, tapping the end of her straw against the bottom of an empty soda can.

"Oh, it's nothing like THAT," said Kaoru. "There are seven boys in the club. Each one represents a distinctive 'type'-although Hikaru and I work as a team because the fact that we're twins IS our 'type.' Girls decide which boy they want to sit with, and we talk and serve them drinks. Once in a while we have themed events where the hosts dress up."

"So… why do you need a club for that?" Gif asked slowly.

"Yeah, that just sounds like hanging out. Or just a weird form of dating," said Sammie. Kaoru couldn't quite read her expression-it might have been perplexed, or borderline offended.

"Well, it's supposed to be classy," said Hikaru. "We drink tea, we occupy a room meant for music recitals, we call all the girls princesses, and and when we dress up, we go all out. It's all kind of theatrical."

"I don't know," said Gaby, a fold forming between her eyebrows. "Sounds a bit sketchy to me. Like a clique of high school royalty running a reverse gentleman's club…"

"It's not a clique, it's for everybody," Hikaru said.

"Wait, so you mean any girl can come?" asked Natalie, an angel of 14 who had hitherto kept quiet.

"Any girl. Or any guy, for that matter, though that happens pretty rarely. Our goal is to make every guest happy."

"And we're not royalty. Hikaru and I didn't have any friends at all until Tamaki asked us to join the club..."

"Still, you're only PRETENDING to like these poor girls…" Gaby insisted.

"Here we go AGAIN with the shrill feminism." Manny rolled her eyes, and made a dramatic show of yawning and stretching. "Wake me up in 5 hours, will you?"

"Princess," Hikaru broke into a winning smile, "That's one thing we don't need to pretend. Like Kaoru said, we know how hostile a place high school can be. If the host club can make school feel a little less lonely for even one person, we've done our job. Besides, everyone's got something to like about them."

"Seems like it's more Breakfast Club than Mean Girls." Gif put a hand on Gaby's arm.

"I guess that makes sense," said Sammie slowly, her smile returning. "Heck, I wouldn't mind if the hot guys at my school volunteered their time like that. I wouldn't even care if it was all pretend."

"Yeah," said Kim, spinning her straw between her fingers. She was no longer bemused, and her voice was back to its old self-remarkably lacking in inflexion. "Most of those kinds of guys, they've got their heads so far up their asses, God forbid they even notice normal people like us."

"Yeah, at my school it was all about who you COULDN'T sit with," somebody else spoke up.

"So!" Manny's voice punctured the swell of commentary that quickly followed Kim's remark. "Tell us more about your host club 'type'!"

"Oh!" the twins cried in unison.

"Well," said Hikaru, "Our 'thing' is that we have homosexual tendencies. For each other. Which means our relationship is doubly taboo, and we struggle between our attraction and our friendship!"

Right on cue, Kaoru shot Hikaru an artfully tortured look with his best doe-eyes, and melted against his brother's chest. "Oh, Hikaru… Why did you tell them that! I thought that was our secret!"

"I'm sorry, Kaoru," Hikaru softened his voice to a heady whisper. His face hovered above his brother's, their eyes locked, Hikaru's finger poised under Kaoru's chin. "You make me so happy, I could not help myself… I wanted to share our love with the world."

"I forgive you, Hikaru." Kaoru let his voice fade away. His brother's hand on the small of his back, and the fingers pressing urgently into his flesh made it easily done - Kaoru's lips were quivering, and his vocal cords failed him all on their own.

Gaby's jaw fell to the floor. She hadn't been quite convinced by Hikaru's earlier argument, yet now her skepticism was replaced by an altogether different form of incredulity. Manny reached over and used her fingertip to gently push her friend's chin back up.

"Oh. My. God." Sammie swallowed hard. "Do that again."

...

Back in their room after lights-out, the twins looked at each other across the darkness between their beds. A small sliver of light came in through the crack below the door, and the frosted windowpanes gave off a soft iridescence, scattering the moonlight.

"You know, this place isn't so bad. I could learn to like it," said Hikaru.

Kaoru was silent. The beds were indeed too far apart to hold hands comfortably, even if both of them lay just on the edge of their mattresses. They had also ascertained that both beds were bolted to the floor, and the gaping shrapnel wound in the younger twin's chest had reopened. He lay in the dark, breathing heavily into his pillow, feeling naked and cold, and willing himself against all odds to keep the floodgates closed. If he had been seven and had been sent to boarding school alone, he imagined, he might have felt exactly the same way. The only problem was that he WASN'T alone, and he WASN'T seven. He was sixteen and-let's face it-a shameful, shameful crybaby who couldn't even handle sleeping in an unfamiliar bed without his brother.

"Of course, these beds are torture… Kaoru?"

A strangled sob came from the other bed.

"Oh, Kaoru, don't cry."

The older twin threw off his covers and was by his brother's side in a hop, skip, and a jump. Kaoru had buried his head under his covers and was weeping pitifully.

"Aw, Kaoru…"

Hikaru pulled up the covers, lay down by his brother's side and stretched his body alongside his, letting him bury his face in his chest as he always did. Instinctively, he ran his hands down Kaoru's back, then up and down his hips and thighs.

"Hikaru-"

"Yes, Kaoru?" said the older twin, pressing his lips into his brother's hair.

"Don't… Just hold me."

What did you think I was going to do? - Hikaru wanted to retort. And yet Kaoru was right, his hands had wandered to Kaoru's middle on their own accord, and his thoughts had already begun to paint a picture of Kaoru's naked form entwined with his.

No.

You. DIRTY. BASTARD.

Kaoru was still crying, but his sobs were less desperate now. Each breath emerged as a quivering whine, but his chest rose and fell more steadily.

Hikaru pressed his mouth harder against Kaoru's hair, forcing his breaths to sync up with his brother's, and willing every ounce of energy that had been growing between his loins to leave his body with the air. It seemed a futile effort at first, but bit by bit the tension abated. He started, as if waking up from sleep, and realized he had been holding on to Kaoru for dear life-so hard, he must have just avoided breaking his ribcage. Oddly enough, Kaoru had barely moved at all during that time, and for a split second a cold fear sliced into the older brother's soul.

"Kaoru! You alright? I'm so sorry."

I had one job, to protect you, and I almost broke you. I held you in my arms, and I nearly broke you. I am not fit to be your brother.

Kaoru looked up at him, his face and neck awash in moonlight. He looked fragile, like an extraterrestrial whose time on earth was ending. But the only thing that looked broken on him was his smile.

"I'm fine, Hikaru."

"May I give you a kiss, Kaoru? Just one, before I go back. I won't bother you again, I promise."

"No, Hikaru."

The wound in his chest was slowly pulling shut, the pain growing duller and increasingly more distant a memory. Kaoru reached up and cupped his brother's face in his hands, as Hikaru had done to him innumerable times before. He brought his lips to his brother's.

"Don't go. Stay," he whispered.

That night, the twins slept soundly. Hikaru had set his alarm for 5:55, and woke up just in time to get to his own bed before the phlebotomy people came.


	5. No Self-Respecting Princess

By the end of the week, the twins had settled into a routine at Hazeltown. During the day, they were kept busy, as everyone on the ward had a twice-weekly meeting with a psychiatrist, a daily appointment with a dietician, and three sessions a week with a psychologist. Every week, there were weigh-ins. Mealtime also remained a popular event, and though not everyone who came ate, the twins always led the company in a spirited rendition of "I-ta-da-ki-ma-su," or "I humbly accept this food." Before long, the Japanese words for "Good day," "How are you," and "I hate this place, I wanna go home" had also become part of the general vocabulary. At first, Gaby had complained acridly that nobody had wanted to learn Chinese when Shar had arrived. Yet she still observed with interest as Kim and Manny, both of whom had taken Japanese in college, practiced assembling increasingly more complex phrases over coffee with the brothers.

Hikaru had been "limited" to a daily supervised run along the perimeter of the park, but remained in character dutifully by doing furtive body-weight exercises and making sure to get caught once in a while. He still struggled to talk to the medical professionals, and his psychologist the very opposite of Mrs. Honda, but he solved the problem by giving what he thought was a performance of a lifetime as the uncooperative patient. His personal favorite moment, which he shared with his brother, was when the doctor had asked him to describe himself, and he had said, without missing a beat, that he considered himself "mentally problematized."

"Mentally problematized?"

"Mentally problematized."

"Is that your word for it?"

"Yes."

The doctor had sighed, scratched his head, and wondered-as politely as he could-whether something had been lost in translation.

Kaoru, for his part, was making more progress. His psychologist was Cynthia, a diminutive 30-something woman of mixed Asian ancestry. The first time they met, she was wearing a silk blouse that tied at the collar, and a daisy pin behind her ear. One of the first questions she asked made Kaoru cry, even though she'd assured him that the question was asked routinely. Cynthia let him cry for a few moments, perhaps wondering if she had said something wrong or overstepped a taboo. She then got out of her chair and handed him a box of tissues. As Kaoru reached to take one, he realized he'd never seen quite so much compassion in a single gesture. He spent the rest of the session only half-coherent, but left with a sense of lightness.

He had wasted no time, either, in observing his neighbors. Everyone in the place had a secret it seemed, though some secrets were more transparent than others. So far, Kaoru thought, there was one person who lent herself especially well to being read like an open book.

Every day, Manny would disappear into the phone booth as soon as she could get away from morning exercises. She would sit in the cubicle looking small, her knees pulled up to her chin and her head crooked over the receiver. Every few minutes she would say something, but more often than not she seemed to be waiting for the person on the other end to speak. Most of the time, she stayed on the phone for the whole fifteen minutes that were allocated to her, and longer when there was no one to check the time. When she hung up, she always came out looking like she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her effervescence would abate for three hours at least, and she always, always sat over her next meal morosely, ripping food into tiny shreds. Kaoru had noticed this a few days in, and wondered about the person who managed to wield such power over the girl whose personality could fill an Olympic stadium. Manny was in a relationship that she didn't talk about much - that much he learned from group therapy. All he knew about the man was that his first initial was R., and that he had been a year ahead of Manny at Duke University.

Today, Kaoru had decided, he would give up wondering and do something about it. To that end, he stood leaning against the wooden doorframe of the telephone cubicle, and pretended to wait his turn. When Manny finally put down the receiver and emerged, she bumped into the younger Hitachiin face to face.

"Oh, hey…" She cocked an eyebrow, searching her mind, but her expression was absent.

"Kaoru."

"Yes, Kaoru. Go ahead, I'm all done." She made a move to scurry away, but Kaoru stepped in front of her.

"Princess… Hang up, and find someone better."

"W-what?"

"I said, hang up and find someone better."

Manny spat a retort heavy on words that were not part of any self-respecting princess' vocabulary.

"Manny, wait." Kaoru ran after her through the common room, overtook her, and grabbed her by the wrists.

"No touching!" a nurse yelled from behind the glass.

Kaoru let go.

"Manny, hear me out. Please… I know who you talk to every day. It's not that hard to figure out. And, Manny, you… really are a princess. You light up a room. Heck, you'll light up ten rooms five miles below sea level. You're-" Beautiful, he wanted to say, because she was. Though her features had one or two flaws, there were many moments when she was strikingly lovely, especially when she was too lost in a task to know anyone was looking. He stopped himself just in time, not wanting to give the wrong idea. "You're amazing. You're good, and you're worthy of every happiness in the world. You need to be with someone who won't lose sight of that fact for a single moment."

Manny stared at him opaquely. Her mouth twisted into a grimace.

"And who do you suppose that might be?" She sneered. "You?"

"No, not me… It's complicated with me…"

Manny rolled her eyes. "Complicated! That's what they all say! That I'm AMAZING, and that everything's so FUCKING complicated!"

"All I'm saying is, you deserve better."

"Better! I've been hearing that I deserve better all my life. That I'm TOO good, that I'm TOO pretty, that I'm TOO smart, and that's why nothing ever works out. Well, maybe I'm not! Maybe I'm NOT better. Maybe there is no better for me."

It was Kaoru's turn to be lost for words-after all, it was not a condition he could easily sympathize with. He heard Melodie start up a particularly gladiatorial rendition of Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto somewhere in the distance.

"I've been dating since I was 13. I'm exhausted. Where is he?" Manny wailed, letting go of all pretense of being tough as nails. "Where is this MYTHICAL guy?! What fucking enchanted forest is he stuck in?!"

"He's out there." Kaoru was well aware of how impotent his words sounded, but had decided to stand his ground. "Trust me, when you find him it won't be complicated anymore. And I can be there for you every step of the way. Alright?"

A moment passed as Manny gazed at Kaoru. He saw her rallying her defenses-the walls of a fortress rising from the ground, spikes emerging from the stones.

At last, she drew a breath and stepped across the distance that separated them. Before Kaoru could react, she had seized the boy's face with both her hands and kissed him square on the lips.

Stunned, Kaoru let his jaw and tongue go slack. His hands hovered over her waist, halfway between a caress and a move to push her away from him. He realized, detachedly, that it was his first ever kiss with a girl-his first kiss period, with anyone except his brother-and that it did not feel half bad.

"A-HEM! Remind me again what the rules are about touching."

They broke the kiss to find the nurse standing over them. As Kaoru struggled to regain his composure and fumbled for words, Manny was quick to cut the discussion short.

"It's my fault. I started it. I was out of line. It won't happen again."

She let go of Kaoru, spun around, and walked to her room, slamming the door behind her. Even half-broken, Manny still had the walk of a born Green Beret.

...

"That hussy!"

"Hikaru, calm down."

"That whore! If she thinks she can just stick her tongue wherever she likes, she's got another think coming!"

"I told you, it didn't mean anything. She was upset, and I'm over it."

But Hikaru refused to be placated. Although it was not the way Kaoru would have preferred his brother to find out, news of the kiss had spread through the ward like wildfire, and accosted Hikaru right as he was stepping out of his meeting with the nutritionist.

"Upset?!" he shouted, "I'll give her something to be upset about! Kaoru, I don't want you hanging out with that shady bitch any more! I'm going over there. I'm going to give her a piece of my mind, and I hope she had a good appetite for it."

"Yo, who're you calling a shady bitch? Take a good look in the mirror." They looked up to see Manny standing in the doorway. Her hair was down-the first time they'd ever seen it that way. The skin around her eyes was swollen, but it was not nearly as red as her nose.

Kaoru had to grab Hikaru's arm to keep him from throwing himself at her. His mind raced to find a diversion.

"I'm really sorry you had to hear that, Manny. Hikaru gets... carried away sometimes. I didn't know you knew, uh, THAT word in Japanese."

"I've been studying up on my swear words. Anyway, look." Hikaru looked like he'd cooled a few degrees, embarrassed, and Manny took a tentative step over the threshold. "I'm sorry I touched your brother, Hikaru, and I'm sorry, Kaoru, for violating your space and making you my rebound."

"It's okay. I understand perfectly, and to be honest, I've already forgotten all about it."

"Can I finish?"

"Sure."

"Ok. I said I was sorry, but-I'm also not sorry. I mean, I'm sorry for doing it, but I'm not sorry it happened. I wanted to know if R. and I were over, and now I do. Because life's too short not to go after what you want, and too short to waste going after something you don't. If you've got someone you want, tell them-go after them." She brought her hands to her face, and her voice quivered a little. "Go after them, and don't be a fool."

She shot them both a rueful smile, and was gone with a shuffle of feet.

...

The next morning, the twins were holding court as usual in the dining room as usual.

"Just one more spoonful, for me," Hikaru was cooing. His hand reached for his brother's chin, a well-practiced gesture.

"I can't, Hikaru. Why are you torturing me like this? Why are you so mean?" Kaoru half-sighed, half-moaned, the expression a perfect blend of world-weariness and martyrdrom that he hardly had to fake. As of several days ago, he had been placed on a medication that curbed his bulimic tendencies, but also killed his appetite stone-dead.

"I don't want you wasting away on me. What will I do without my dear brother?" Hikaru let his lips hover mere inches from Kaoru's, and turned to the girls. "Princesses, let's help Kaoru, shall we?"

Margo, Gif, Sammie, Helen, and even Gaby-not without an eyeroll that had become her trademark response to the twins' performances-smiled with varying degrees of sheepishness and slowly picked up their spoons, scooping up equally diverse amounts of oatmeal.

"You too, Shar." Hikaru's expression was winning.

The gyaru picked up her spoon and scraped a sliver of melon onto the tip.

"Alright, ready, set… Just a minute, princesses."

Manny had walked in and sat down by herself at a table in the corner. When Hikaru came up to her, she was ripping her toast into miniscule pieces and poking absently at her oatmeal. A flicker of "which-one-are-you-again" ran over her eyes.

"I'm Hikaru." The older twin bracketed his kneejerk annoyance for the moment, extending his arm with the name-bracelet in plain sight. "Truce?"

Manny nodded, and Hikaru took the seat opposite her.

"I'm sorry about the whole bitch thing."

"It's okay. It doesn't matter. No matter which way you spin it, everyone thinks I'm the big, fat, desperate slut now. And everyone's laughing at me."

"Nobody's laughing at you, Manny. And nobody thinks that." Strictly speaking, he could not be sure it was true, but Kaoru and Manny's fifteen minutes were definitely coming to an end, due in large part to a concerted effort on the part Gaby and the twins to disseminate the notion that it was nothing more than a moment of mutual hurt and comfort. "I, for one, am glad you're over that guy. Anyone could see you were never happy after you talked to him."

The girl struggled to keep a straight face, staring at the boy across from her. Her fingers flew from bowl to bowl, handling the shreds of massacred toast as if they were bullets. She wanted to throw something at him, to knock him over on the floor and smack him repeatedly, to shout that he was just being Nice-that everyone was always being Nice-and that she didn't need his charity. A tear slid down her cheek.

"Manny, phone for you." A nurse had materialized behind Hikaru.

"Who is it?"

"An R.K."

"I won't be accepting any more calls from R.K., Miriam."

"Not even this one?"

"Not even this one."

Hikaru stood up and offered a hand to help her up. "Come on. We saved you a seat."


	6. A Melodie for Hikaru

Eventually, Hikaru realized he would have to find a new pastime.

He had thought that trolling his doctors and counselors was going well, as they appeared to hang on his every word no matter how ridiculous it seemed even to him. But the last time he had insisted, with all due pathos, that there was no point in talking because nobody understood, the psychologist had shifted his eyeglasses over the bridge of his nose and said,

"You know, Hikaru, I think you are mistaken. Everyone who works at Hazeltown, from the director to the janitors, has struggled with a mental health problem at one time or another."

"Everyone?"

"Yes, everyone. Didn't you get that memo when you first arrived?"

He hadn't - or if he had, he didn't remember. But ever since that moment, Hikaru had been paranoid. After all, if it took one to know one, was it not only a matter of time before someone would expose him for a fraud? As unpleasant as it was, the time had come to start talking and thinking about his mother again - or rather about "food," as he and Mrs. Honda had decided to call her. His mind occupied by new impressions and burgeoning friendships, he had only been too happy to have her as a distant voice over the telephone, out of sight and nearly out of mind. He wasn't truly sure that it would help things to start bringing her up at his sessions, as he was skeptical of psychologists in general. But at the very least, she was a legitimate problem and it was high time to stop wasting the staff's time with problems that were't real.

Except-not just yet. That evening, he was too busy trying to find ways to stay calm. He had already done all the pushups and burpees he could back in his room and had been reprimanded by a passing nurse, which was just as well - he was exhausted. Presently, he was arching his spine over the short back of a blue settee, his head and shoulders hanging off the other side. He looked at the world upside down and half-heartedly pretended to be spying on the Girl-Twins, as he'd come to think of Shar and Gif. The two were playing what appeared to be an elaborate game of checkers with pieces of cereal. Kaoru was gone for the evening for special observation, as he had stopped eating altogether. That was, indeed, the long and short of it - the roleplays where Hikaru had to beg and plead with Kaoru to eat were no longer roleplays. To quell his anxiety, Hikaru was trying to focus on the sounds of Rach 3 coming from behind the wall, like a motor slowly ramping up to full power. He knew there was nothing he could do to help Kaoru at the moment, but he needed SOMETHING to keep himself from turning into Helen and pacing the room like a caged tiger. This time, Melodie played in fits and starts, and the sounds called to mind visions of rachitic old women dancing waltzes with ghouls on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

The good news was, he had indeed found a distraction a few days ago, and that distraction was Melodie.

Melodie was the one girl who completely ignored the twins' existence, though a sense of having been shunned wasn't the reason why Hikaru had taken an interest in her. The truth was, he liked a challenge, and he knew Melodie had never been never heard speaking except to shout at the staff. He wanted to change that - how and to what end, he wasn't even sure.

At first, lost for ideas, he had followed her around overtly in hopes that it would push her buttons. When she was on the phone - which he calculated was about five hours a day, as she shamelessly cut group activities - he was also on the phone, in the neighboring booth, talking to the dial tone. As far as he could ascertain, Melodie had been involuntarily committed, was not on speaking terms with her parents, and spent a great deal of time on the phone with various lawyers.

When Melodie wailed on the piano in the music room, he was not far behind, leaning against the door frame or shuffling through the sheet music on the shelves.

When Melodie was in her room composing songs that sounded like the Devil himself driving a rusty dead-cart down crooked alleyways, he found a seat near her door - at times literally under her door. At one point, it had been an advantageous springboard for an impromptu host club performance.

"Hikaru, are you following Melodie around?" Kaoru had said, pressing a fist to his chest - his voice wounded. "Are you in love with her?"

Kim had put down her Pepsi can, and looked up dispassionately from the expansive food log over which she had been poring. "This should be good," she said, throwing Sammie what passed for a smirk among her limited repertoire of facial expressions. Sammie had made a show of crossing her legs and pressing her thighs together, fanning herself ineffectually with one of Helen's latest creations. The two had a bond, it seemed, where Sammie humored Helen's delusions and praised her escape plans to high heaven. In return Helen smuggled Sammie her desserts.

"Oh, Kaoru, I'm sorry," Hikaru got up and turned away from his brother, the hand on his brow Byronic brooding incarnate. "But you've been so cold to me. You don't eat, you hardly sleep, and I can't get a word out of you. I didn't know what else to do to get your attention."

"So you thought you'd hurt me, Hikaru? What sort of brother are you?" Kaoru all but threw himself on Hikaru's chest.

"Oh, just bone and get it over with, you damn homos!" Manny laughed affectionately, emerging from the phone booth and wolf-whistling in case anyone had not caught her meaning. She used the phone much more rarely now, but invariably looked happier at the conclusion of a conversation.

"I'm sorry, Kaoru, it's just that…" Hikaru's voice quaked as he brushed a strand of hair from his brother's's forehead, "I love you so much, it drives me mad sometimes. And then I'm not myself, and I do terrible things. Will you forgive me, Kaoru? I'll do anything to make things right."

"No touching!" the nurse had yelled from behind her screen, but they could see that she, too, was enjoying the show. She had only jumped to do her duty when her partner gave her a significant look.

All other things equal, the twins were much less embattled in private now, and Kaoru had even approved of Hikaru's plan to get to the bottom of things with Melodie. In general, although the brothers presented a united front to their friends, they were not always on the same wavelength when it was just the two of them. This was something they both admitted to enjoying, as it felt like one always finished the other's sentences in ways neither expected. Their differences provided food for thought and discussion, and ensured that things were never boring. In keeping with that trend, the staged lover's quarrel was perhaps the exact opposite of what had been happening behind closed doors. Hikaru's anger at his lot, at his mother, and at Kaoru's condition had been crowded out by concern and tenderness. Kaoru's diving BMI and the fact that they were far from home with only 130-odd square feet to share, were realities as hard as Kaoru's cheekbones, from which the flesh was slowly sloughing. It seemed profane to think of bed business given the state of things, so Hikaru had channeled his energy into reprising his paternal role. Slowly but surely, Hikaru was learning to control his urges as he lay holding Kaoru between the sheets at night. Where before he had imagined pressing Kaoru's wrists into the mattress with his forearm and making him beg at once for more and for mercy, he now imagined his longing swirling out of his nostrils and pores, enveloping them both in a soft cocoon safe from the world. One thing still frightened him from time to time: he'd feel Kaoru's bones, and his own stomach would fall as if he'd glanced down a precipice. At such moments, he would pull away slightly, sliding his hand to a part of his brother's body that still had flesh. If Kaoru had already fallen asleep, he would get out of bed and do pushups in the middle of the floor until he was exhausted. There was something to be said about exercise as a way of dealing with things, however maladaptive.

Kaoru must have noticed this somehow, as one day he had climbed out from under the covers when Hikaru was coming out of the shower cabin. It was warm, and he had gone to bed nude. The moon, an invisible lover, caressed the soft curves of his legs and chest.

"Tell me, brother," he had asked, a little sadly, "Do you still want me this way?"

Hikaru had found the question strange - it was not like Kaoru at all to be this forthcoming. But it was a fleeting thought, as it took all of his presence of mind to answer calmly; he could only thank the stars that he had just thoroughly cooled himself off under the running water, and the rush of blood he felt was merely to his head.

"Kaoru, you have no idea how much I want you. In every way." I'd have you on every surface of this room in a heartbeat, he thought, and swallowed heavily. "But it's more important that you feel better first."

Kaoru didn't answer, and Hikaru thought his brother had looked a bit forlorn, but when they'd both climbed under the covers Kaoru kissed him, a show of initiative that was anything but characteristic. They passed the rest of the night resting cheek to cheek.

…

At any rate, however, whether due to the lover's quarrel or not, the clinic staff had taken notice of Hikaru's pursuit of Melodie, and before long a nurse named Sarah had pulled him aside.

"Hikaru, we've noticed you're following Melodie around. Is there a reason?"

"Why, did she say something?" For a second, Hikaru thought he was done for, but he decided to answer truthfully. "I'm curious about why she never talks to anyone. I want to try and make her come out of her shell."

"We don't need you to do that," the nurse had said. "We need you to focus on your own recovery. Melodie's already getting professional help."

But when push came to shove, Hikaru's time at Hazeltown had made him realize he did not believe in professionals. For as long as he could remember, change always seemed to result from a force that arrived suddenly from without and shook things up. Change did not come from analyzing feelings every day with endless talk. Feelings, after all, were meant to be felt, and change… was like the wind. No one knew where it came from, and no one knew where it was going. All you could do was watch and wait and be prepared. And granted, Kaoru was better at that. But Hikaru wasn't half-bad either.

…

By the time Hikaru was pondering Melodie's playing from behind the wall, having decided to start watching and waiting from farther away as per the nurse's orders, he had realized two more things. Manny might have liked to stir the pot, and - as terrible a thing as it was to say - gossip might have been one of her few stereotypically feminine passions. But when it came to knowing how things really stood, Kim was the go-to woman. On the first day, Kim had been the one to inform them of the grisly reason why chopsticks were banned from the premises. In the days that followed, Kim turned out to be the storehouse of institutional memory. She remembered the exact day and time when each of the residents came in, and under what circumstances. It also turned out that her favorite lounge spot - for lounging was all she did except when the powers that be forced her to do anything else - was near the nurses' panopticon box for a reason. The nurses talked, after all. "I like to know things so I can work the system," she had shrugged with Hikaru asked her about it. She never appeared to work anything, of course, but at the moment it was very nice to know.

"Kimi-chan," said Hikaru, taking his eyes off the girl-twins and shifting his gaze to the worshipper of an invisible sun. Despite her otherwise aloof demeanor, Kim had taken a shine to being called Kimi-chan during their conversational Japanese lessons. "Tell me more about Melodie."

Kim drummed her fingernails on the table. Hikaru was still looking at her upside down - he was quite enjoying this. Gravity was making him smile even though he didn't want to. "I wish I could. But she's been here longer than any of us, if you can believe it."

"She's here against her will, isn't she?"

"We're all here against our will on some level," said Kim, her mouth in a line. Hikaru waited for a chuckle that never came. "Melodie's accomplished. REALLY accomplished. She was almost famous."

"I'm not surprised. Rach 3 isn't exactly a beginner's piece."

Melodie started up the second movement for the third time, with a vengeance.

"She was supposed to play it for a competition before she got put in here. It's all she plays. It's all she's ever played on the piano here. Literally. From what I've been able to piece together, it's because her parents would hit her on the hands whenever she made a mistake. They refused to feed her until she got it right. So that's why she doesn't eat until she gets it the way she wants it."

Hikaru had figured it would be something like this. After all, Melodie was Asian - though he couldn't be sure just how Asian - so draconian Tiger Parenting techniques might easily have come into it. In fact, where he came from such things were unsettlingly normal. Yuzuha still reserved the right to smack the twins when they did something objectionable. Physically disciplining her children was something she considered her prerogative. and hers alone. That much had always been made clear to every member of her staff charged with his and Kaoru's care. It had always made him feel plenty powerless and so angry he could cry, to be slapped until he saw stars for landing in the bottom quartile of a class even though he had tried his best. Getting smacked quite literally every time he did something wrong might easily have driven him more distracted than Melodie. Now that he had his confirmation, though, the wheels in his head set to turning.

Melodie's playing fell silent, and she hurled an unintelligible epithet at someone they couldn't see. A nurse, most likely, who had come to see her - or perhaps drag her - to an appointment.

"Kimi-chan, thank you," said Hikaru at last, straightening up. "I think I have an idea."

Kim watched him walk away to the music room, and put a strip of gum in her mouth.

…

The music room was empty - nobody except Melodie used it on anything like a regular basis. Hikaru thumbed through a basket of music scores, and it did not take him long to extract a copy of Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto. It looked as thought it had been just as thoroughly abused by Melodie as the piano's keyboard.

Hikaru knew how to play the piano. Although it had never been a particular passion, Yuzuha had made sure that each of her sons mastered at least one instrument - not so much for its own sake, but for the sake of developing character. The twins had picked the piano for a practical reason: it meant they would never be forced to be a part of an orchestra, a band, or any similar nonsense.

He whistled as his eyes ran over the notes. Not a beginner's piece indeed, he thought. The melody began simply, but soon sprawled across the keyboard in complicated chords that forced the hands to play irregular, breakneck leapfrog. But once you were fluent in reading notes, you were fluent, and the beginning did look reasonable. To pick his way through was all he needed.

He sat down, and began to tease out the opening melody with the right hand - just the notes; it was too early to strive for continuity or proper tempo just yet. His muscle memory was rusty, and it sounded like someone had snuck chopsticks into Hazeltown and was using them to stumble over the keyboard in the dark. But soon his wrists had loosened, his fingers and hand pitched a proper tent over the keys, and he realized he was almost enjoying himself. What he was playing barely resembled Rach 3; like that of a music box past its prime, the melody would sputter to a halt every few few seconds and double back to three measures ago. But this was - dare he say it - fun. He loved a difficult task, after all, and before long he was barely registering the passage of time. He didn't notice when Melodie appeared by his side.

In fact, she stood over him for several minutes before he looked up at her.

"Hello." Hikaru smiled. She's here, and she hasn't curb-stomped me into the keyboard yet, he thought. So far, so good.

He turned the page, and looked at the first line for a moment. He formed a tentative chord, and then a second one. The third one was more challenging - good. He hit the keys hard, letting his pinkie slip deliberately and sprawling his thumb over two keys - a black and a white one.

He looked at Melodie furtively with the peripheral vision of one eye as he pretended to study the next measure. She looked like she'd been shot, and was watching blood drip out of her chest, too numb from shock to feel the pain just yet.

Hikaru performed several more iterations of what he'd just done, letting himself grin now as he took every opportunity he could to make a gross error or simply miss a key. He let himself add more chutzpah to his playing, too, as he was getting to the part that lent itself well to being played in the gladiatorial manner Melodie seemed to enjoy.

Melodie cleared her throat, but it was more like a strangled curse.

Hikaru looked up, his smile on loan from Erroll Flynn. "I'm sorry, princess, did you say something?"

He stared down the stream of daggers that seemed to be coming from her eyes. She seemed to be struggling to speak, and her lips were quivering, her nostrils flaring, her forehead in knots. Something was tearing her up inside, but a minute passed and no answer came. Hikaru shrugged, smiled, and started to play again, milking each key for all it was worth with sophomoric zeal.

The sound of twelve keys hit at once tore through the music and silenced it.

"MOVE!" Melodie roared.

Hikaru took his hands off the keys, a picture of composure.

"Oh, so you talk," he said calmly. "You've got a lovely voice, princess. You should use it more." He twirled a lock of his hair around a finger, cocking his head so the light hit his cheekbones from a more advantageous angle. "But I'm sorry - I'm afraid you're going to have to wait. You're always playing the piano, and you're very, very good when you do, but you never give anyone else a chance. I want to challenge myself and get better too, you know."

Melodie blinked at him for several seconds, as if trying to recall to mind the proper words to be used in such a situation. Her face had gone gray. She moved her lips as if mouthing words, but no sound came out.

"I-I-I… n-need…. m-m-m-my… piano," she finally squeezed out.

Well-well, he thought. You've stopped screaming. Caught off-guard by someone actually treating you like a human being? Or is this the first time you're interacting with someone outside a prescribed power dynamic?

"I'm sorry, but this isn't your piano," he replied. "This is the place's piano. I have just as much right to it as you do."

He looked at her emphatically, a mask of charm still splayed across his features. Nothing to say? Alright. He played another measure, nearly flawlessly, and paused to pore over the next set of notes.

"Th-th-that's… m-m-m-m-y piece."

Hah! It seemed that Melodie was a stutterer - at least when she wasn't shouting at the top of her lungs. It made sense, Hikaru thought. A lifetime of being corrected, criticized, and made to feel worthless would make anyone hesitate to speak. Now, if only he could make her criticize HIM. If only he could make her feel that her lifetime of effort could be of some use - could do something for somebody. He wasn't sure what he'd been thinking with all this; he never did think things though all the way. But first he would have to shake things up - and he was doing just that. He was close to cracking things open. That's all he knew. If nothing else, it was a worthy start.

"I regret to inform you, but it's not your piece either, princess. It was written by Sergei Rachmaninoff over a hundred years ago, and performed by many people since then. Your playing it on loop all day does not make it yours."

Hikaru cracked a self-satisfied smile and let his fingers dance across several octaves with a fluorish - for that was what the score demanded. He then let let them land in a thud over the final cord, missing three out of its four notes.

"I…. D-D-D-ON'T…. C-C-CARE. MOVE!"

Hikaru felt Melodie hurl her entire weight against him, but he had been waiting for something like this. He had been bracing his entire body for minutes, and had looped his legs against the supports of the piano bench just in case. Melodie had slid onto the bench and thrown herself at him from the right side, but only succeeded in making him move a few inches. Moreover, Hikaru was holding both his forearms over the keyboard to keep her from reaching over to play despite his presence. She tried to regroup and pushed him once more with the full force of her hip and shoulder. But Hikaru's efforts at getting into "character" over the last weeks had done him good: he had gotten stronger, while Melodie was frail from perpetual dieting. Her efforts had minimal effect.

"Princess, you won't win this," Hikaru said, chuckling. "You're just going to have to wait."

Melodie let her back slump as she threw a withering look at Hikaru. She then folded her arms, and breathed heavily, scanning the room for what Hikaru assumed to be sharp objects. Her fists were clenched, and her knuckles had grown whiter than the keys.

"I see," Hikaru raised an eyebrow. "It seems you can keep the girl from playing, but you can't keep the girl from the piano." He sniffed, half-laughing, a dimple forming on his left cheek. "But seriously. I'm not just trying to piss you off. I've been wanting to talk to you." He took his forearms off the keyboard.

Silence. Seething.

He waited. Slowly, her irises - too dark to be distinguished from her pupils - slid in Hikaru's direction and stopped at his chin.

"I always hear you play," he said, "And maybe it's not perfect - I'm no expert, so I wouldn't know - but there isn't a thing I would change. Your playing, it's got - individuality. Maybe you can give me notes - no pun intended."

"Y-y-y-ou sound like I d-d-did w-w-when I was six. You're t-t-terrible." She might have scoffed, but the words took too much out of her.

"Well, I had lessons, but I never liked my teachers."

She folded her lips as if to spit another strangled curse, but seemed to think better of it.

"Well? How about it?" he lowered his head so that his eyes were in her field of view. "Will you help a poor talentless devil?"

Melodie made no move to stop him, so he stretched his arms out in front of him, cracked his knuckles, and raised his hands over the keyboard. His aim was to hit the keys of the following phrase all but approximately - the messier, the better. But when his fingers touched the keys, there was no sourness to the sound, as Melodie had deftly cupped her hands over both of his, and positioned his fingers just right as they fell.

Those in the common room that night would hear the rickety sounds of unskilled fingers fumbling with Rachmaninoff's most famous work for many more hours. One by one and in groups, they drifted to the music room, wondering what had happened to Melodie. Had she broken her fingers? In all truth, violent performances of Rach 3 had become so much a part of the background noise at Hazeltown that no one noticed them anymore. But an all-out massacre of the piece was something new. What they saw gave everyone pause: Hikaru and Melodie were sitting head to head, not massacring but dissecting page after page. And Melodie was TALKING to Hikaru, her speech as clumsy as his playing. She talked to him all through his first evening apart from his brother.


	7. The Hedgehog's Dilemma

Kaoru had taken a liking to his psychologist Cynthia. He wasn't sure what did it, but his money was on her nail polish. Every time he saw her, she was wearing a different kind. And it was never simply red or pink or beige, or any of the more pedestrian colors. Her hands seemed to have remained twelve years old while the rest of her grew up. One day, she wore green with round glitter flecks that formed gold shamrocks in a field of verdant jelly. Another day, she wore newsprint-white with stars, which reminded Kaoru of a fight scene in a comic book. All that was missing was the tiniest stylized bubble encapsulating the word "Pow!" Other than that, she dressed primly and tastefully: for the most part in sleeveless dresses and monochrome blouses. This made her nail polish stand out all the more, although its color invariably echoed some other part of her wardrobe.

He wasn't sure why, but her nail polish made him feel like he might just be able to trust her. No one who wore such nail polish could be evil, or think entirely in stereotypes, he decided. And it did not take Cynthia long time to figure out in which direction she had to dig. When they first met, Kaoru had burst into tears when she asked how far he'd gone sexually - one in a long battery of social history questions that she was required to ask. She tried to console him, but he had not stopped crying all session. At first she had chalked it up to culture shock. But it soon became apparent that Kaoru was repressing something of no small significance.

"Is food a comfort?" Cynthia had ventured at one point during a later meeting.

"Yes. Well, kind of. But what I like more is how I feel after I… uhm…" Kaoru fell silent and looked down. "I'm sorry. You know what I mean." He'd smiled sheepishly, a small dimple appearing on the right side of his chin.

Cynthia nodded. "And how do you feel at that time?"

"I feel-numb. Numb, but happy. Like there's nothing to worry about."

She'd thought as much.

Kaoru was a rarer sort of customer, but not entirely atypical. He was not one of the hosts of people who came to her having been subject to social pressures to be thin and perfect from a young age, and would talk in circles about how they loved seeing their thigh gaps grow and the numbers fall on the scale. With Kaoru it seemed that body image or numbers of any kind hardly came into it, but he was certainly self-effacing to the extreme. Even in the way he sat, pushing his feet under his chair and folding his hands, he seemed to be at once protecting what little space he took up and apologizing for doing so. He was under pressure, sure enough, but of a different kind.

Cynthia tried to approach things from the other end.

"Kaoru, can you think of what else is happening around the time you decide to eat and get rid of your food?"

She'd missed her mark, though - she was experienced enough at her job to catch a client's eyes starting to wander and glaze over as they thought of a suitably vague reply to a question they were not ready to contemplate. "I… don't know," replied Kaoru. "It's hard to say. There's always a lot going on. Usually it's around bedtime."

Alright - perhaps she had something. Bedtime was specific, and specificity was progress across an ocean of pain.

"Do you mean to say that you eat deliberately before bedtime and then get rid of it?"

"Yes."

"What do you feel at bedtime that you don't feel at other times? That is, before you eat and get rid of it."

Kaoru was silent, and Cynthia let the silence happen.

"What do you think about at bedtime?"

Kaoru definitely thought he could trust Cynthia, but could he trust her enough to tell her he was guilty of an incestuous relationship with his brother? He looked at her nail polish - that day, it was chock-full of square glitter of various sizes in purple, gold, and more subtle colors. But from her nailpolish, however beautiful, there was to be no help.

I think of things that shouldn't be? I think of a future that can't happen? I think of how it will all invariably end? I wonder what's wrong with me?

"I think about things that happened to me - things I couldn't handle," he finally said. "I feel things I can't handle."

And, they had gone full circle.

Kaoru was looking at his hands. "I'm sorry. That's all I can say about it right now."

Full circle - then again, no, perhaps it was more full-spiral. It was always like that. Cynthia always thought she'd hit a dead-end right before ideas began to jump out from every corner, and connections began to forge themselves all on their own. The end of the day was simply THAT sort of time for many people, when thoughts that had been drowned out by the noise of the day could be heard again. When everything seemed overwhelming after many hours of fielding crises. Maybe bedtime was the only time he could get the privacy he needed. But then again, it wasn't exactly typical to burst into tears at the mere mention of sex and remain unconsolable. And bedtime was… could it really be?

"That's alright, Kaoru," she said. "I'm happy you shared as much as you did with me. You don't have to talk about anything if you're not ready.

Kaoru looked up at her, and his eyes were thankful - if a little apologetic. Please don't start crying again, she pleaded silently. He was such a beautiful boy, with skin that seemed to be made of Venetian glass. He reminded her of St.-Exupery's Little Prince all grown up, and though it would have been unprofessional to show it, it broke her heart to see him cry. Things had happened in her life a long time ago that had made her want to protect children at the cusp of a adulthood, and that was part of the reason she'd chosen the career she did. But it was also what made her job difficult. Much of the time, she found herself trying to find roundabout ways to help when all she often wanted to do was to give hugs.

She took a deep breath. "Let's talk about something else," she said. "Let's talk about your family and friends."

Through the remainder of that session and the next, Kaoru ended up painting Cynthia a detailed description of his family and home life. He had parents he adored and respected, though his mother was on the domineering side. He was a good student, he was close with his brother, and he had a stable group of friends at school. Cynthia was growing increasingly perplexed - to hear him talk lovingly about the way he and his brother pranked their friends and enjoyed sunny summer days of water balloon fights, it seemed like he was the world's most well-adjusted teenager. And it was remarkably sweet, how he described his parents brushing hands furtively during dinners and long drives, saying little and smiling.

Wait…Brushing fingers? Smiling?

"It seems your parents' relationship makes you happy."

"It does." Kaoru's expression looked as though he was remembering the feeling of walking on air. "It makes me feel like there's… Hope. Like love isn't just something you feel for a while and then lose sight of." He ended his answer with a sigh, and a lopsided, slightly dejected smile.

"Is that something you want for yourself?"

"Of course." Kaoru's skin had a delicate glow. "I'm kind of like a girl that way, I guess. I want my happily ever after…"

But? It seemed to Cynthia that there was a but, the way he'd let his voice trail off.

"Is there someone you feel - you might want to have that with?"

"Yes… Well, kind of." Kaoru's glow spread to his neck, which he held high with the poise of a dancer, and trickled under his collar. "I'm pretty sure it will never happen."

"What makes you think that?"

Cynthia's nails were a planetarium that day - blue and dark and filled with blinking hexagons. It's alright, they said. We won't tell.

"Lots of reasons." He couldn't help but chuckle. "But mostly it's because I don't think I can trust - that person…" Kaoru fell silent and waited for the earth to open and swallow him up for his treachery. "Which is weird," he added quickly, when the floor showed no signs of yawning below him. "I really should be able to. I always have before. But I don't think I can trust… them not to play with my heart and get carried away."

"What makes you feel like you can't trust them?"

"Things are a whirlwind when we're, uh, together. You never know what's going to happen, and where things are going to go. I have a hard time controlling the situation, and it sometimes seems like… that person will say anything to get their way. And… that person doesn't really like to think things through. I know that very well."

"Trust is very important in a relationship. What do you think it would take for you to trust that person?"

Kaoru bit the inside of his cheek, and reached for a wire sculpture on the low magazine table that stood between him and Cynthia. He turned it over and over in his hands, sliding the coils of wire such that new patterns emerged.

"What do you like about them?"

Kaoru let his eyes run up her hair, two straight arrows on either side of her face.

"Only everything." His lips spread skyward, and his expression was back to the one he'd had before - the one that made him look like he was walking on air. "I like all the ways in which we're different, even though nobody would assume that just by looking at us. I like how that- person protects me and shows me off. I like the way they can be brilliant and lazy at the same time. And how competitive they can be, and how kind. Even to perfect strangers."

Kaoru caught a breath. The second hand had toured the face of the clock no less than five times since Cynthia asked the question when suddenly something let loose inside him. Images of Hikaru began to rise up in his mind, and they rose and rose, like so much smoke. Hikaru the ball of energy, emotions chasing one another across his face. Hikaru laughing, Hikaru brushing things off, Hikaru putting a good face on things. Hikaru growing angry, then moody, then apologetic, then finally putting words to thoughts. And then there was Hikaru acting protective, Hikaru letting the chinks in his armor show…

"I… love the way they have no sense of timing," Kaoru found himself saying. It was getting easier to speak, and nobody DID know who 'that person' was, did they? "I like how they can remember a walk or a joke from five years ago, but never in context, and how they never seem to think about tomorrow. I even like the demented way they laugh at things that are sudden and explosive, even when it's no time to be laughing. And what's really weird is, I… LIKE the way they never take no for an answer. I… LIKE the way they came and kissed me four years ago, and ever since I've felt like I've been evicted from life as I knew it."

Of course, perhaps he'd never really liked life as he knew it until then. As long as Hikaru stayed by his side as his lover, he thought, life would be worth living, and no other life would do. Even if Hikaru had forced his way in. Even if he, Kaoru, would be destroyed by the things he desired in the end.

"Evicted?"

"Yes. And now I'm always feeling naked. I'm always feeling like I won't be able to tell that person 'no' and actually mean it. There were many times when I felt like I didn't have anything that was mine anymore, because that person could trick me so easily into believing in a happy ending for us. I would fall for it time and time again, even though things always ended with me coming off my cloud and feeling lost and wishing I could forget."

He paused, and looked at the flower pots behind Cynthia's head, their greenery spilling down the side of a bookshelf.

"And the funny thing is, I MISS that feeling now that I'm here and we're… farther apart. That feeling of this person coming in and turning everything in my life upside down."

Cynthia touched her lips to her knuckles in an effort to stay any tears, for she had been growing closer - inadmissibly, dangerously so - to crying. Kaoru seemed to be imagining "that person" in front of his eyes and spoke with a tenderness that only a 16-year-old boy who knew nothing and felt everything could express. He spoke of "that person" as she could only wish someone, someday would speak about her. And by all accounts, "that person" had violated him - if not physically then emotionally, perhaps repeatedly.

"Kaoru, you seem to like this person very much," she finally said. "But it sounds like you and I may have to work on asserting your boundaries with them."

"Boundaries?" Kaoru cocked his head, letting the wire sculpture he'd been twirling rest. His lips drifted into a smile. "I'm a twin. I don't know what boundaries are."

Cynthia remained stoic. "How would it feel for you to tell them how their actions make you feel? I mean everything. Both the good and the bad."

...

Kaoru had followed the sounds to the music room and stood in the doorway. Hikaru was seated cross-legged in the middle in the common area, surrounded by nearly all the girls on the ward (minus Meodie) and strumming a guitar. Yellow, gossamer light streamed through the window, softened by the matted surface that prevented anyone from seeing outside, and came to rest on the boy's arms and legs. Hikaru plucked the strings with relative deftness, but his voice wouldn't have even qualified him to be a chamber singer, and to add insult to injury he struggled to hit an average of one in three notes. This was unsurpsiring - Hikaru had embarrassed himself at more karaoke do's than anyone could remember - once, someone who had already had a few had even douzed him in melon soda. But that day, all the girls' eyes were on him in rapt attention.

Guitars - thought Kaoru. That's EXACTLY how they work. Even if you can't carry a tune to save your life.

That said, he had to admit that Hikaru's voice was not without a charming artlessness, a vocal version of the expression his brother wore when he looked at him with bedroom eyes. The song was about two people who had freckles in their eyes that aligned just right when they kissed.

"Hikaru, The Postal Service** is this-close to suing you for defamation," said Kaoru.

Hikaru muted the strings with a tap of the hand.

"Made you smile, though."

"You make a fine geisha, brother - where did you get that shamisen? I had no idea you played. What else are you hiding?"

"It's Melodie's," Sammie piped up. "Apparently she taught him, too."

"I've gotta say," said Manny, "I'm still really impressed you even got through to her, Hikaru. I kind of thought she'd spend the rest of her days yelling at nurses and pounding on the piano like nobody's business."

"She's alright, really," said Hikaru. "A little worse than Kaoru when he's sulking, but not by much. I don't even think she really needs to be here - she just needs someone to love her."

"That's what SHE said." Manchester slapped her thigh.

"Hikaru, don't tell me you-" One of the guests laughed.

"No, nothing like that. I, Hikaru Hitachiin, am a gentleman. I just think everyone could use somebody to make them feel special. You'd be surprised at how many problems that would solve."

Here he goes with the naive artlessness again, Kaoru thought, and lowered himself down by his brother.

"So what about you two," asked Margo, stretching out her legs over a pouf. Her arm was out of the sling, but still in a cast, and she let it drape over the side of her arm-chair, clearly enjoying the newfound range of motion. "Don't you have each other?"

"We do," said Hikaru with a grin. "But this one here is such a doubting Thomas, he prays to the porcelain god every night. I think I need to start holding his chin 24/7 to stop him from doing that." Right on cue, Hikaru's arm flew out to his brother's face and Kaoru was not fast enough to catch it.

"Hi-ka-ru…" A warm liquid was already sliding down Kaoru's spine and settling between his hips; his head grew light. "Please, you're embarrassing me."

"Oh, brother, why don't you let me love you? Why do you make me pump iron every night for three hours when I'd so much rather be pumping you?"

A few of the girls crossed their legs and whimpered, and Margo and Manny nearly bit into their fists. Sammie was a hair's breadth away from a paroxysm.

But it was a good question.

Kaoru raised his hand and put it on his brother's forearm, pulling it down.

"Hikaru," he straightened up by what felt like sheer willpower. "If you really want to know, it's because… I'm afraid of getting hurt." He squeezed his hand around his brother's forearm tighter. "I have always been afraid that I'd fall… deeper in love than you would. When we were first together, I started to feel things I wasn't ready for."

Hikaru could barely believe his ears. Before, their relationship was something Kaoru would always be hesitant to explicitly own up to, in public or in private. Hikaru who the one who was always playfully hinting at what happened behind closed doors and peppering his replicas with the word "love" while Kaoru dissolved into blushes. Actually analyzing their not-quite-platonic love out loud, actually owning up to it as something that had gotten to him - that was something new, and given the present company, Hikaru could not be sure if Kaoru was speaking the truth or simply taking the role play down a new avenue. For an uke, Kaoru had always been less than inclined to make himself vulnerable by talking about feelings. He would always yield silently, and let Hikaru know that he'd enjoyed himself by looking at him silently as if the world had fallen away. In fact… No. From what he knew of Kaoru, his brother wouldn't even touch a topic like this unless something had truly discombobulated him. More than that, it was not something Kaoru would approach lightly, and that's what such role plays for the ladies were by definition - light. And there was nothing light about this. THIS was Hikaru hearing Kaoru finally baring his soul to him, after all those years. It was one thing to have sensed it back then - to have thought he sensed it - and quite another to hear it.

It was all Hikaru could do to keep the timbre of his voice sultry, to look like he was devouring his brother with his eyes, and to keep his words and gestures restrained. It was all he could do to keep himself from shouting from the rooftops "He loves me, he loves me, he really, really loves me." Because - Of course! - how could he have been that thick?! A role play, where the audience acted as a buffer, where if something went wrong you could instantly backtrack and say it was all for show, was just a safe forum for Kaoru to say it! Hikaru could barely keep himself from throwing himself at his brother's feet and declaring that all he wanted now was to get married and have loads of sex and babies.

"Is that why - you always try to keep me at arm's length? I thought it was just because you're shy - and you're so lovely when you are."

"I AM shy," Kaoru took his hand away from his brother's and shifted to sit in prim seiza-style, legs folded underneath his thighs. "But it's more because I had started attaching a significance to it all that I didn't" - think you shared, he wanted to say. "- think was right. That I thought would only hurt me."

"Kaoru, I would never hurt you. I would do anything to keep you from feeling pain." The words flew from Hikaru's mouth nearly automatically. And yet - perhaps Kaoru was right. Perhaps he, Hikaru, really was too strong, in all ways.

"And now I'm afraid for another reason," Kaoru said quickly. "Because you've been pulling away. Maybe it's because I'm… here, maybe it's because I'm… sick, but… I've missed you." I've missed you pushing my boundaries. I've missed you forcing your way into my space. I've missed you shaking me out of my complacency. Maybe you're falling out of love with me already because I don't know what I want. And maybe I was right to be afraid of my feelings - it hurts, no matter how much I try to protect myself. He wanted to wrap his arms around his brother and weep desperately, to beg of him in the name of all that was holy not to let what they had fade away - and it didn't matter who saw.

"The hedgehog's dilemma" - they heard Gif's voice.

"The hedgehog's dilemma?" The spell had broken. Both twins spun around to find the semicircle of girls still in assembly, watching the proceedings with bemused curiosity.

"Hedgehogs huddle together for warmth, but if they get too close they prick each other with their spines," Gif explained. "It's hard to stay warm and not get pricked at the same time."

Hikaru eyed the girls around him, blinking, as if seeing them for the first time. It was clear that they were as confused as he had initially been as to whether what transpired was a roleplay, or genuine.

"Kaoru," he finally turned to his brother and took both his hands in his. He took a chance and let his voice harden slightly, indicating that he now spoke as himself, and not the tragic yaoi lover he played to such great critical acclaim. All the better, he decided, if the world was watching. "I thought I made it clear that you will always have me. All of me. I won't give up on this, alright?"

"Alright, brother." Kaoru had made an instinctive move to pull away, but stopped himself, and let his hands relax. "But what if we never find a middle ground?"

"We'll find one. We'll work on it," said Hikaru, turning his head to seek the line of his brother's eyes. "From now on I want you to tell me everything. I don't want a single feeling to cross that little heart of yours without my knowing it." He sincerely hoped his voice had left no room for doubt. "After all, what are twins for?"

...

Hikaru lay in the darkness, his brother's head on his chest. He let his abdomen rise and fall as he breathed to make his chest rock less, so Kaoru could get a better rest.

"Hikaru, do you think we really can? Find a balance, I mean?"

"I have no doubt about it."

"Do you ever have a doubt about anything?" Kaoru laughed, propping himself up on his elbows and letting his nose brush against his brother's cheekbone. He ran his fingers softly - a butterfly touch - down his brother's chest and abs, and marveled a little at the new muscle definition. He'd been so wrapped up in himself, he had barely noticed his brother's body change, and it almost caused a sweet stirring inside him.

"Not really. Although - no, that's not true. I am still not sure what makes you afraid of your feelings. Though I'd really like to know."

"Ha, I think the real question is, how are you not afraid of yours?"

"I'm brave like that." The older twin chuckled, giving his brother's cheek a light pinch and kissing where his hand had been - just missing Kaoru's mouth. "I just wish I could be brave for both of us."

Kaoru kissed the hand that pinched him, got up from the bed and walked across the floor. He pressed his elbows into the glass, lacing his fingers behind his neck.

"You know, what *I* really wish is to have a window that actually lets you see outdoors. We're in Hawaii after all - it seems like such a waste."

Hikaru pushed aside the covers and joined his brother at the window, taking him brother in his arms from behind and nestling his head in the crook of his shoulder so they were facing in the same direction.

"We'll get out of here soon," he said.

And that much he was sure of. After all, Kaoru might have gone back to being avoidant, but they had definitely made headway. They had begun to talk about things they had never touched upon in quite so many words before. It would only be a matter of time before he found out why Kaoru had decided he liked to hurt himself.

(**FYI: the song referenced here is "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service, though my favorite version is an acoustic cover by Iron & Wine. I imagined Hikaru's performance to be similar to the latter.)


	8. A Call and a Visit

"Who do I have to screw to get some real coffee around here?" Manny grumbled darkly. "This instant crap don't do shit."

She was staring into her cup in what seemed like a vain hope of incinerating it with her gaze.

"You'd think with as much as we pay they'd at least get us some real coffee…"

In truth, strong coffee was not allowed at Hazeltown as many of the residents had abused it as a stimulant or a meal-replacement before arriving. Manny had been a particularly flagrant case, but that morning her complaint was legitimate.

The night before, she had gotten a new roommate, and over breakfast the twins had heard a mightily amusing description of how the girl had spent half the night showering, and the other half moaning like a wounded elephant seal. They had done their best to sympathize, as they had heard some of what went on through the wall, and could only count themselves lucky that they were deeper sleepers than Manny, courtesy of Yuzuha telling the maids to vacuum the nursery during their naps "to build character." They also praised Manny's imitations of the sounds in an attempt to cheer her up, but the latter still looked like a Yankee** with a hangover - and then the new girl herself had joined them. The bags under her eyes were even darker than Manny's.

(**Yankee = member of a Japanese female gang, often rides a motorcycle.)

Her look was bewildered, and did not change as she looked from one twin to the other.

"So which one's s which," she asked dully.

"Hikaru's king of the castle. Kaoru's the one with the vagina," Manny replied. "Watch 'em long enough and you'll figure it out. There's a prize in it for you if you do."

Hikaru covered his mouth with his fist as he sporfled in spite of himself, and Kaoru tried to deflect attention from the blush that had consumed his cheeks by swatting at Manny with a spoon.

"Hey! You're not allowed to introduce the 'Which One is Hikaru' game! That's our thing!"

"Yeah," said Hikaru, surfacing from his fit of giggles. "And you're not allowed to be that funny when you're low on sleep, either. If you're that funny when you haven't slept, what are we going to do when you're well rested?"

The new girl looked unamused.

"Do you have any cigarettes?" she asked Manny in a voice that could only have been described as sepulchral.

"If I had a way of getting cigarettes, I'd probably have a way of getting outta here too, and Helen would be out of business," Manny grumbled, appearing to speak to her yogurt.

"Do you?" the new girl turned to the twins.

"Sorry, we don't smoke," Hikaru and Kaoru replied in a chorus that may have been right at home in an after school special, doing their best to blend their voices. They weren't too keen to give away the game to the newcomer quite yet.

The girl blinked at them.

"Why not?"

Before either of them could find a way to answer - after all, getting asked why you DIDN'T smoke wasn't something that happened ever day - the conversation was interrupted by nurse Sarah, who had appeared smilingly at the table.

"Good morning, everyone. May I borrow the boys for a moment? There's a phone call for you two."

"Both of us?" the twins asked in unison.

"You know - it seemed that way, yes. I'll put you on speaker."

That was a little odd. Their mother, the only person who called them, liked to talk to them one at a time, and at any rate, she always called after dinner. The twins followed Sarah to one of the phone booths, where she pressed a few buttons on the receiver and disappeared with a smile that bespoke a good night's sleep and all-around satisfaction.

"HIKARU! KAORU! ARE YOU ALRIGHT?! HOW DARE YOU DISAPPEAR LIKE THAT?!" the phone bellowed.

"…A-a-and hello to you too, boss," the twins answered.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW WORRIED I WAS?!" Tamaki's voice shouted, showing no sign of having heard them.

"Calm down, boss. We haven't disappeared, we're perfectly fine," said Hikaru.

"Yeah, senpai. Deep, yogic breaths, alright?"

"BUT WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON?! WHAT HAPPENED?!"

Hikaru raked his brain for a way to buy time.

"What's going on? It's summer," he said. "What happened to not intruding in the hosts' private lives?"

The staff and administrators of Hazeltown were paid well to maintain the illusion that the place was a "health restoration resort," make heavy use of euphemistic terminology, and avoid the words "rehab," "addiction," and "mental disorder" like the plague in any communication with non-residents. The clinic was also not listed in public records, and referrals largely occurred by word of mouth and through private physicians, so those who came there did not need to be informed of the services offered. Thus, while Tamaki - or more likely Kyoya - might have tracked down the twins, figuring out the true nature of the place was another matter entirely.

The voice at the other end of the line paused, and Kaoru shot Hikaru a wistful "I-told-you-so" look.

"Well, your cell phones were off," Hikaru's retort seemed to have had a sobering effect: Tamaki suddenly sounded apologetic. Hikaru imagined him biting his lip and making big eyes. "So I tried to call you at home, and they kept telling me that you were fly-fishing in Alaska. But you were gone for such a long time I started to worry you'd gone native or something, and then I decided to visit you - I've never been to Alaska, and I always wanted to visit the North Pole. So I had Kyoya look you guys up, and he tells me you're not in Alaska, you're in Hawaii! In a health restoration resort! WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU BE IN A HEALTH RESTORATION RESORT?! ARE YOU SICK?! ARE YOU DYING?! DID YOU GET MAULED BY A BEAR IN ALASKA?!"

"Ok, boss, calm down," Hikaru tried to keep his voice as even as he could. "Deep breaths. Seriously."

He lowered his head to the level of the phone as though he was speaking to someone curled up in a ball throwing a tantrum - a circumstance unlikely to have been far removed from reality.

"Everything's okay. Nobody got mauled. Nobody's dying." He lowered his voice. Here goes, he thought. After all, it had been naive to think that they would have been able to keep what had happened from their friends forever. "Tamaki, what I'm about to tell you is a very private matter, so it's really important that you keep it quiet, okay?"

Kaoru put a hand on his brother's shoulder, and Hikaru reached up to squeeze it. He did not let go as he began to speak.

"It's Kaoru. He's got a - health problem. It's not really one they have the tools to treat in Japan, so that's why he's here. And I'm here with him. They have me down as a patient too so I can be with him 24/7."

"Oh." There was a long pause. Both twins stared breathlessly at the phone. "What's wrong with Kaoru?"

That was Tamaki through and through, sure enough - he never failed to ask the blunt question. And in all truth, it was definitely a fair one. Japanese healthcare was not exactly sub-par, and by some metrics it was even better than that in America.

"I've got an eating disorder, Tamaki," said Kaoru. "I've got a… compulsion to throw up after I eat."

The phone was silent for what seemed like an eternity.

"Kaoru, I didn't…" Tamaki said at last, his voice betraying residual shock. Of course, Kaoru chuckled to himself. Of course Tamaki hadn't known men could get eating disorders. At first he hadn't believed it either. In fact, that was the reason he had been in denial for such a long time. "But… why?"

Kaoru couldn't resist a chuckle. "That's a complicated question, boss. But I'm working on it."

By all accounts, Tamaki had realized he had been prying too far.

"Oh, Kaoru, I'm so sorry," he shifted gears quickly. Kaoru could almost imagine the childish way in which the Prince might have been blinking his eyes, the brothers' struggles suddenly his only world right then. "Is there anything I can do to help? Will you be alright? HIKARU!" Tamaki's voice rose halfway to a frantic shout, "ARE YOU TAKING GOOD CARE OF HIM?!"

"Yes, sir, I am. And he WILL be okay. I'm not letting him out of my sight." Hikaru turned and hugged his brother around the torso, motioning him silently to climb onto his knees, as the phone booth bench could not comfortably accommodate two people sitting side by side. When Kaoru complied, he squeezed him tighter, and planted his lips silently and firmly against his brother's neck.

"Alright, make sure you don't. I want both my beloved sons safe and sound and back ASAP, you hear me?" Tamaki was back to his exuberant self. It was amazing how fast his moods changed. "So tell me, do you like it there, at this health restoration place? Is it helping?"

Kaoru smiled, making eye contact with the phone. Granted, it was hard to tell what Tamaki thought of the whole situation, and how much - if anything - he had understood or even processed. But for what it was worth he was no longer shouting, and he did not seem to have been made too uncomfortable by the revelation. Acceptance would come later, and maybe in time they would sit down and have a long talk about it all. For now, the hard work of getting the truth out was done, and Kaoru was only too happy to deflect the conversation to lighter topics.

"I guess it's helping, yeah. It's very nice here," Kaoru said. "The building's beautiful, but I don't get to see the grounds much, even though there's a bit of rainforest and a beach. And we've met some fun people. It's all girls here besides us, but you'll be happy to know that we've been doing the host club proud and keeping them very, very happy."

"That sounds great!" Tamaki's voice seemed to be bouncing off the walls at the news that Hazeltown wasn't a grisly penitentiary. "Are there visiting hours? Do you think we could pay you guys a visit? I want to see this place for myself and learn all about eating disorders!"

"Boss," Hikaru interjected, "I think we all know the answer to that question. Now that you've found us out, you're going to come visit whether we like it or not."

The phone gave a crinkly laugh.

"Well! That much is true. Besides, it sounds like you need reinforcements. How many girls are we talking, exactly?"

"Uh… 15 or so? No, 16 now," replied Hikaru, remembering the new girl from breakfast.

"And they're desperate, boss!" Kaoru sucked his cheeks in to stall a laugh, and pressed his lips into Hikaru's hair as he covered his brother's mouth preemptively with his hands. "So desperate, they'll listen to Hikaru sing and play the piano! Now that I think about it - we need you here, stat!"

…

Later that day, Hikaru was once again "borrowed" by a chipper Sarah, and informed that he had a visitor. This time it was during official visiting hours, which on Saturdays were in the afternoon. The residents took visitors either in the common room or, if they were allowed more freedom of movement by doctors, they would take a trip to the guests' lodgings, as Hazeltown had a small hotel for family and friends. Sarah conducted Hikaru to the latter location, and pointed him to a woman who was sat in one of the armchairs in the foyer flipping through a magazine by the light of a Tiffany lamp.

It was his mother.

Of course, she looked so out of character he barely recognized her. He might have overlooked the oversized sunglasses she did not remove when she saw them, but normally, Yuzuha had a penchant for borderline indecent, youthful clothing that hugged her still nearly-perfect curves. ("If you've got it, flaunt it," she was fond of saying). That day, though, she wore a white ensemble that fit more loosely, and if not for its impractical color she might have been headed on a duck shooting holiday in the English countryside. Gone, too, was the mane of red hair that she normally refused to subject to the tyranny of hats and pins. Instead, her head was covered by a sweeping Hermes scarf in fiery colors, its loose end draped over her shoulder like a braid. As he got closer, Hikaru realized not without a touch of shock that she had cut her hair.

"Hello, mother," Hikaru bowed his head. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

He thought to ask why she had asked to see just him, but decided it was unnecessary. After all, she liked to speak to them one at a time on the phone, so wanting to meet with them in person individually did not seem inconceivable. Perhaps Kaoru's turn would come later - or the following day.

The corners of Yuzuha's mouth twitched. "Do I need a reason to visit my son?" She had not removed her glasses.

She nodded to Sarah, who returned the nod and took her leave. Hikaru made a move to sit, but his mother shook her head and led the way to a four-seasons porch that doubled as morning-room and coffee shop. Hikaru pulled out a chair for her, and they exchanged pleasantries until a staff member appeared and asked if they cared for refreshments.

"I'll have an iced tea, please. Green."

"Iced tea, mom?" Hikaru raised an eyebrow and one side of his mouth. "Since when are you on the wagon?" Yuzuha was fond of boozy brunches, and did not hide the fact that she often had three martinis before business hours were through.

The waiter disappeared, and she looked up at Hikaru. He tried to peer through the dark lenses, but all he saw was his face.

"I'm not on the wagon, I'm…."

The waiter was back, placed their glasses in front of them, and was gone.

Yuhuza took a noisy gulp, stifling a sob into the glass. Her mouth curled upwards, and two tears ran down her cheeks into the corners of her mouth. If she wasn't wearing sunglasses, Hikaru would've seen that his mother had a very childlike, comically ugly crying face.

"I'm expecting."

In a different time and place, Hikaru might have been disturbed to learn that his parents were still having relations, but the sight of his mother weeping - nay, showing any emotion besides anger or mirth at having chewed someone out in a particularly colorful manner - was even more shocking.

"And you know," she added, valiantly choking back a sob as something seemed to break inside her, "When I found out, the first thing I thought was… should I really be having this baby? You never talk to me anymore except to mouth off, and Kaoru's slowly killing himself. Sometimes I wonder if I'm cut out to be a mother."

She paused and breathed in and out, her gasps ragged but nearly noiseless. Her mouth twitched violently, grotesque like that of a Greek drama mask, and she seemed to be fighting with all her might to make it curl back into a straight line.

Hikaru reached out and folded a hand over hers.

"But the ironic thing is… If I could live my life all over again, having you and Kaoru would be the one thing I'd do again. Everything else can burn in hell."

A few seconds of her wheezing passed before Hikaru found his voice.

"Mom, don't cry," he said. "A baby is a wonderful thing."

Yuzuha sobbed again, downing the remaining contents of her glass.

"And there's another thing! I'm an old lady! By the time this child grows up, I will be 65 years old! Christ, I should've been more careful."

Her shoulders were shaking now, and the hand she pressed against her mouth, biting into the knuckles, did little to stifle the sound of her weeping.

"Come on, mom. You're not old. And with the life expectancy these days, 65 is not so bad."

He waited for her sobs to grow quieter.

"Besides, Kaoru and I will help you." He ran his thumb back and forth over his mother's and looked straight into where he assumed her eyes would be. "Look at it this way. You said you'd have Kaoru and me all over again. This is your chance. And we'll help look after the house and the company, too, so you can be there for our brother or sister the way you want to."

Yuzuha was silent, her teeth digging into her clenched fist.

"How can you do all that? You're 16."

Hikaru sighed and took his mother's hand in his, running his fingers over the palm, his lips pursed.

"You know, I really wish everyone would stop saying that."


	9. The Hitachiin Heir

"Mom's pregnant."

"Ah, so that's who you were with. Well, I'm not too surprised. She's clearly still got it goin' on." Kaoru closed the book he was reading with a snap. Over the last few days, he had been looking more well, as his medications had been adjusted, and he was slowly but surely starting to eat, albeit in birdlike amounts. Old habits died hard, and he had had two bulimic urges, but he consented to have Sarah and Hikaru hold his hand through both - which Hikaru considered to be another small breakthrough.

"She told me not to tell you, but…"

Hikaru shrugged ineffectually. Kaoru smiled.

"I can see her doing that. She didn't want me to get too worried or excited, right?" He chuckled - clearly he was about to do neither, but he knew his mother through and through. Much like Hikaru, she was protective to a fault.

"Yeah. I'm sorry…"

"That's okay. I'm happy you did. It's great news."

The older twin had done his best to maintain composure during his visit with mother, but walking back to his and Kaoru's room had forced him to realize just how tired the conversation had made him. Tired… and heart-wrenchingly, heart-wrenchingly sober, as if he'd woken to an empty apartment and a stale pot of coffee after a night of abandon. He sat down onto the armchair occupied by Kaoru, crowding him a bit, and stared up at the ceiling light - which was on unnecessarily. He blinked, as if seeing the dull white light for the first time. Kaoru put his arm around him.

"Yeah… You're not surprised, but *I* am," said Hikaru. "And I feel… strange. It's almost like I learned I'M the one having a baby." Like… WE'RE having a baby - he wanted to say.

Kaoru ran his hand back and forth over Hikaru's shoulders. "I can see that. It's definitely understandable."

"I… feel like I should start doing things better. Taking life more seriously. I want to start taking more of an interest in mom's business - I mean, learning the ropes and shadowing her on the weekends or something. I should start working harder in school, too. And I really want to be there for mom through all this, what with the pregnancy and the baby and all."

Kaoru had put the book aside and was massaging his thumbs into the muscles spanning his brother's neck and shoulders.

"I think those are all very good thoughts, Hikaru. And I think you can definitely manage all that if you try." Kaoru hazarded planted a soft kiss on his shoulder. "It'll be good for you."

"You'll help me, though, right?"

"With mom and babysitting and homework? Sure. But there's something I've been meaning to tell you, and I guess I might as well do it now: I'm starting to think I might want to go to med school. That is, if I can pass the exams. But that might mean I will be around a little less than I have been, and you might need to become mom's apprentice on your own for a while."

"You… WHAT?"

Hikaru's mind screeched to a halt, tumbling into a heap over his brother's words.

"I want to be a doctor. A psychiatrist, maybe."

"A… psychiatrist?!"

YOU…. LITTLE… SKANK! Hikaru wanted to scream. Just when I needed you to say, 'Yes, Hikaru, whatever you say, Hikaru,' you spring THIS upon me?!

"But what about mom's company! I can't run that thing alone! I need you there!"

"Mom runs it alone, and so can you. And before you say 'that's because she's mom,' nobody's asking you to build anything from the ground up like she did, just to run it."

Hikaru was sinking deeper into the armchair and looking smaller and more pathetic with every word. If Kaoru's feathers had been ruffled, he was certainly good at hiding it.

"And, look, it's not like Hitachiin Group can have two heads. We live in Japan, and it doesn't matter that you're only six minutes older-you'll always be the older son. Plus, I don't need to make a ton of money. I could practice medicine part time and spend the rest of my time supporting you from the sidelines. We'll find a way to make it work. But I also really want to do this."

Hikaru stared at his brother dumbly. "May I ask why you want to study for six years only to work for the Man, when you can enjoy a cushy job as a vice president of a multi-billion dollar company?" he finally managed to whisper, his voice hollow.

"Because. Who's going to advocate for these poor people out in the real world? If you're sick, you can't help yourself. I see it every day here. It's hard to get even the most basic needs met, and it's worse when you have to face stigma and no one believes you. Remember how mom didn't believe us? Remember how you physically had to drag me in? We're LUCKY to be able to take a time out and deal with things in a nice place like this; other people don't have that. And - there's a lot of authority that comes with a medical degree. Who knows… Maybe I can change things."

Kaoru had gotten up as he was speaking, and his brother was curled up in a small ball on the seat, his forehead on his knees. He was wheezing, barely audibly.

"I'm sorry, Hikaru… But I really want to try. I'll always have Hitachiin Group to come back to if it doesn't work out."

Hikaru looked up, his face puffy with tears.

"No, I get it." He stifled a sob.

Kaoru fell to his knees and grasped his brother's face in his. "No, Hikaru, please don't…" He made a vain effort to wipe away two streams of tears with his thumbs, but they ran to the older twin's jaw and dripped into his lap. "Please don't cry…"

"It's just that… This is the beginning of the end, isn't it?" sobbed Hikaru. "You'll go to medical school, and I'll major in business or whatever and take over mom's company, we'll drift apart and have completely separate li-i-i-i-ves!" He had given up all hope of maintaining a straight face and was bawling now. "And if you think you can placate me with that bullshit about you practicing medicine part time, guess what - I'm not buying it! I'm not even gonna rent it! And you can't go to med school or residency training part time, either! The whole thing's like ten years! Anything can happen in ten years! You said so yourself!"

"Is everything okay in there?" A nurse poked her head into the room.

"YES!" The Hitachiins shouted in unison.

"Hikaru's having a hard time with some news, but he'll be okay."

The nurse nodded a bit grimly-but having ascertained that no one was having a meltdown and no physical harm had been inflicted, she withdrew, and Hikaru went straight back to sobbing.

"All I wanted was for us to be together, to be there for each other, forever and always. To spend every minute of every day together. To have a house and a fucking mantelpiece with framed wedding photos. To go to bed together and get up together and drink coffee together and go to work together and then go away together for Golden We-e-e-e-e-k!"

"Wait… what? Wedding photos? That's not-"

Possible, he wanted to say.

"Oh, fuck it, Kaoru, you know what I mean. You're too slippery a snake to admit it, but YOU. FUCKING. KNOW. WHAT. I. MEAN. Red string. Joy doubled. Sorrow halved. Us. Growing old together and sitting on a porch. Playing Go and making fun of the people passing by."

He got up from his seat, briskly, grabbed both his brother's hands and fell to his knees.

"Marry me, brother. I don't want any other wife but you. Ever."

Kaoru was thunderstruck. Granted, unlike nearly every other time his brother deployed together-forever imagery, at the moment he wasn't saluting prominently with his pants. And there hadn't been a trace of irony in the conversation for many minutes. This, for Hikaru, was a record, but it might also have meant that the time was growing ripe for the older twin to rip off his mask, shout "Psych!", and erupt in raucous laughter.

"That's… illegal. For at least two reasons," Kaoru replied at last.

"Fuck illegal. I'm not saying we should go to city hall or a church, but there's no reason we can't live as if we did. People do, don't they? And we're in the fashion business, we're filthy rich - I never thought I'd say this, but thank God for mom. Nothing we can ever do will ever wrong. It'll be… eccentric."

"O…kay." Hikaru's face still betrayed a mild incredulity. It didn't SEEM like his brother was play-acting; usually, if he was throwing a fit this bad one could be sure it was quite genuine. Though Hikaru had the remarkable ability to move on from all sorts of things, he wasn't very good at masking strong emotions. But Kaoru still thought it wise to stall for time - mostly to keep himself from flying wingless. "Might I ask, though, what any of this has to do with my medical career? There are plenty of couples where both people have very different jobs. They're still able to be there for each other, and it works out just fine. In fact, that's how most people live. Nobody spends every minute of every day together."

"That… that's a necessary evil!" Hikaru started to cry again, pressing Kaoru's hands violently into his face. "And power couples always break up!"

"I'm fairly sure that's not true. Mom and dad didn't, and they hardly ever see each other at work."

"Their marriage is a sham and you know it. Anyone who isn't blind can see there's no way our dad's really our dad."

"Well, maybe not biologically, but that doesn't change the fact that mom and dad love each other to death."

"You're delusional."

"NO, I just happen to know that dad's totally and completely sterile. Impotent, too. Mom found out on their very first date, but that didn't change anything. I guess it was love at first sight or something."

If Hikaru had had better control of his vocal cords at that moment, he might have whistled and made a joke about how their mom certainly wasted no time.

"He LETS mom have affairs so she can be fulfilled in THAT way. He loves her so much, he's willing to let her go once in a while so she can be happy. Of course, he did get upset when he found out she'd gotten pregnant by a Westerner, what with how white she already looks. He even left home for a few months. But he came back and forgave her." Kaoru chuckled. "Or rather, he was on his knees begging HER to take HIM back."

"How the hell do you know this?"

"Well, for one I know how to ask questions without making them sound like accusations. Another reason why I think I'll made a decent doctor."

Hikaru had to admit that that much was true. Kaoru had somehow managed the unthinkable, and had been chummy with mother for a number of years by that point - or as chummy as one could've expected to get with Yuzuha.

"So… is it true what they say about Uncle Yves?" Hikaru asked brokenly.

"She never told me that much. I'm not even entirely sure SHE knows. According to my, uh, research, she was on the road in Europe at the time we were conceived. So it could be anyone."

Hikaru let go of his brother's hands and covered his face, slumping to the floor.

"How long have you known this? And why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

"About a year now. But I didn't think it was that important, so I disregarded it. It doesn't matter who gave birth to you. It only matters who raised you."

Kaoru had a point there. Hikaru searched his mind for even a shred of desire to meet his real father - in all likelihood a coked-up European model or playboy with as many bastards as mansions. He found none. He decided he liked his father the IT manager better.

"Alright. I guess." Hikaru hoisted himself up and sat on his haunches. "But just for the record, you're killing me, you fucking sex pixie. I don't know how much longer I can last with all these life-changing revelations, so you need to hurry up and give me an answer to my question before it's too late."

"An answer to what?" Kaoru cocked his head.

"My question. You know."

"That's funny. I don't recall it being a question. I recall it being more of an… imperative."

"Which means you can refuse."

"Not until you ask me properly."

"Fine." Hikaru shifted himself onto one knee and took his brother's hand in his, kissing it firmly.

"Kaoru, my best friend, my brother, my twin, my heart, my mirror, my sun in the sky," he pronounced dramatically, "Will you live as my partner and spouse till death do us part? Will you make me the happiest man in the world?"

Kaoru let the words hang for several beats. He had to admit, this was over-the-top even for Hikaru. And when you ruled out the impossible, then what remained, however improbable….

Banzai, he thought. If you play me for a fool, Hikaru, at least I'll have a good story, and if I die a kamikaze, I'll die for love.

"Alright," he replied. "But first - my conditions. Number one: we are going to DATE for a few years first, and in that time I want you to show me you can be a good husband. I want to see you stick to your promises, what you said about mom and school and the business and the baby. Then you can officially put a ring on me or whatever. Number two - I get to search every inch of your person and this room, and if I find even the smallest piece - no, even a whiff of mace or onion, not only will I refuse you, I will literally never speak to you again. Number three - you let me go once in a while so I can help a few schizos without trust funds. Understood?"

…

"Aloha! Hitachiins!" Manny stuck her head through the door, which had been open to the proper 45 degree angle the entire time. "What-up?!"

"Uh… well, it looks like we're going to have a little brother or sister, and Kaoru's decided to go to medical school." AND KAORU AND I ARE AN ITEM! - Hikaru wanted to scream, but checked himself, for he and Kaoru had not yet discussed how - and if - they would present the news to their friends.

"Oh, come on, Hikaru, I still have to pass the exams. They're not easy, you know."

"Hah!" Manny gave a single clap that resonated off the walls. "Looks like you'll have to catch me up on a few things. I was on the med school track too, before I had to take my little vacation. Might still happen. You and me are gonna have to have a little pow-wow, Kaoru. Oh, and congratulations! Anyway, I just wanted to let you know we all decided to start a mural in the art room after dinner, mkay? And we want YOU two gorgeous studs to help, so I'll see you there."

Before they could answer, she was off, hallooing something about a new addition to the Hitachiin family. Hikaru and Kaoru looked at each other, their smirks mirror images.

"Looks like she finally got her caffeine fix."

"Yeah. And she smells like she got her hands on some cigarettes, too."

"So the million dollar question, I guess, is why hasn't she orchestrated a jail break yet?"

"Oh, but isn't it obvious?" Kaoru laughed. "She just can't get enough of that wonderful Hitachiin love."


	10. Honey and the Princess of Oregon

"I don't know, boys, that sounds a bit like speed dating. I'm not sure that would be the best thing for our residents right now."

Sarah was chewing on the end of her pencil. She could not have been much older than 22 and fresh out of nursing school, and perhaps for that reason she was always being saddled with extra paperwork. That week, she was in charge of visit scheduling. She also happened to be an unofficial member of the twins' fan club, and had always seemed to go out of her way to smile and chat with them. Considering the circumstances, Hikaru and Kaoru decided it was the best chance they had to bend the rule that guests could only spend time with the resident they'd come to see. To that end, they had parked themselves in the nurses' panopticon first thing in the morning, and turned the charm on full-blast.

"No, Sarah, it's not like that," Hikaru said, propping himself on his elbow on the side of her desk and smiling winsomely. "It's more like - hanging out." He grinned, happy to have remembered Sammie's initial naive impression of the host club. "The element of structure is just there so no one feels left out."

"Yeah," added Kaoru, leaning forward over a section of desk less covered in papers, and letting his chin rest on his palm as he pressed his finger against the side of his lips. "It'll be a fun change of pace in a safe setting. Besides, I think what's really getting the girls anxious is being cooped up. We're in Hawaii, after all. What's the harm in all of us going to the verandah at the guest hotel and seeing outside a bit?"

He crossed his fingers mentally, hoping he'd hit a nerve. After all, not only had everyone on staff at Hazeltown struggled with mental health disorders at one point or another, but Kaoru happened to know - courtesy of Kim - that Sarah had herself been a patient there only six years ago. And it was true - the frosted windowpanes were not popular with anyone, and no one - not even Kim - knew when and why exactly it was decided that they were necessary.

"Alright." Sarah sighed. After all, they had been there for an hour already and if she didn't agree they might never stop begging. And then she'd never finish the scheduling - or the pile of charting that still waited in her mailbox. On top of that, she had told her girlfriends she would try to get away early to prep for a surprise bachelorette party. "I'll see what I can do. But if anything goes wrong - I mean ANYTHING," she flashed a look as menacing as she could muster at a beaming Kaoru, "I might just let it slip to Miriam what I saw in your room the other morning."

Two days prior, the night after the twins had reached their understanding, Hikaru had not been able to get to sleep. He'd THOUGHT he'd been able to handle that day's revelations well enough when they happened, but his body had begged to differ. As a consequence, he slept through his alarm - a fact he couldn't bear to own up to, insisting instead that it had traitorously neglected to go off. The phlebotomist walked in to find the twins folded into each other's arms on a single bed, and it was quite obvious that neither of them was wearing much more than a pair of boxers. The poor woman got so flustered she dropped a rack of test tubes, and Sarah had rushed in to see what happened.

"Do I make myself clear?" she asked.

"Crystal." Hikaru's smile could not have illustrated his meaning better.

…

"Hikaru, Kaoru, you guys are GENIUSES," said Gif.

"Oh, thank you, princess. It's no trouble at all," said Hikaru, raising his eyes up at her with his gaze set to 'make-weak-in-the-knees.' "I can't tell you how much I've missed serving tea and being gallant. It's just not the same with the industrial water-heaters in the dining room."

Hikaru was glad to be wearing an Ouran Uniform again, too - a surprise loan from Kyoya upon arrival. It had been refreshing to don something that - unlike the Hazeltown scrubs - did not make him look like a sack of potatoes, though he thought it best to stay mum on that point given the company.

Instead, he topped off Gif's tea, pressing softly on lid with one hand and letting a delicate curve of wrist peek out from under the cuff. Gif went silent and chewed on the inside of her cheeks as she always did when he called her a princess.

The girl-twins were sitting with Hikaru and Kaoru in the four-seasons porch of the visitors' hotel, which that day boasted white tablecloths, fine china, and bouquets of red roses in the middle of each table. The highest windows were opened to admit a breeze that bore the smell of sea and orchids, and the one wall that was a long line of windows revealed a lush valley under a sky of deepest azure.

Everyone else had dispersed around the tables to meet the other hosts, and only the girl-twins stayed behind with Hikaru and Kaoru. The official explanation they gave was that they were shy and preferred to talk to the boys they already knew, but there was another reason that only Shar's eyes feverishly scanning the room might have given away. Still, thought Hikaru, throwing what he hoped was a less obvious glance over the room - everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. And perhaps Kaoru's anxiety, which had mounted over as they prepared for the host club's arrival were unwarranted. He understood perfectly, of course – it was one thing to own up to his friend's voice on the telephone that he had a problem. It was quite another to look the entire host club in the eye and allow them into the strange world that have become their home over the last few weeks.

Still, things had gone off without a hitch - or so it had seemed to Hikaru. Tamaki instantly dispelled any awkwardness by bounding down the sweeping staircase of the remodeled Victorian mansion that was the guests' hotel, all but tripping over the rug as he leapt into Hikaru and Kaoru's arms, shook both their hands feverishly, called them his "dear, beloved, idiots," and berated them once more for disappearing and making them all worry. Then Honey had nearly mowed Kaoru over as he slid down the banister with a peal of laughter, called them Kao-chan and Hika-chan, and declared that Usa-chan had missed them almost as much as he had. Through it all, Kaoru had both looked immensely embarrassed and grinned like a fool - that is, until Kyoya pulled him aside and with the poise of one who came from a long line of medical professionals told him that he was looking well, and that the entire Otori clan was at his disposal if ever he needed anything. Mori reigned silently over the proceedings and shook his and Kaoru's hands, pulling them both into a bear-hug. There were knowing smiles and playful punches all around, and if Haruhi had had her passport and been able to make it, it might have been just like old times. In fact, Hikaru thought he saw Kaoru's manner relax a little. It certainly did not seem like the Host Club was about to treat either of them any differently. Or if they were, that theory was not about to be tested, because before three minutes were up Tamaki had caught sight of a knot of girls that had formed in the foyer, and exclaimed,

"Men! We're being rude! We've got guests!" He spun around, clicked his heels, and bowed with a fluorish. "Ladies, welcome to our humble lodgings! My name is Prince Tamaki, and there are my friends, Kyoya, Mori, and Honey! Hikaru and Kaoru you already know, but you will find that they are only one of the flavors we have to offer."

At first, the girls had been speechless. By that point they were used to Hikaru and Kaoru calling them "princesses" and "ladies," but the sight of four more equally good-looking boys in freshly tailored blazers - one of whom looked about 12 and bore a large stuffed rabbit - was something else entirely. Then, nudges and winks and ill-suppressed squeals traveled through the group quick as lightning, and only Manny's stepping forward prevented a tidal wave of girls rushing into a free-for-all that took no prisoners.

"Manny, short for Manchester, and if I'm a princess my tiara's made of dirty Gulf Coast oil."

"-And I'm Tara," her new roommate jostled her way to the front, not to be outdone, the bags under her eyes much improved.

"-And this is Gaby," Manny added, all but ignoring the fact that Tamaki had bowed down to kiss her hand. "I want the Host Club to take extra special care of her."

General introductions and hand-kisses followed quickly, deftly mediated by Tamaki and Manny, and the volume in the room quickly swelled. Kyoya swept the twins aside, announcing that he aimed to dress them in something more becoming. After all, he insisted, he did not want them to be a disadvantage just because Hazeltown forced them to wear Mao suits.

Presently, the host club was in full swing, and they might have been back in Ouran's Music Room #3. Gaby, who had remained skeptical about the premise until the very last moment, had found a seat near Kyoya at a table where everyone seemed to be absorbed in an excited debate. Kyoya was his usual urbane self as he moderated the discussion, Gaby was doing more than her fair share of gesticulating, and Hikaru thought he heard the words "agency," "pedestal," and "supply and demand" bubble to the surface of the conversation. He chuckled - it seemed THAT encounter could already be put down as a success. Across the way, Manny was playing Princess to Tamaki's Prince, her dirty oil replaced by diamonds. He whispered sweet nothings and toyed with the wisps of hair that had escaped from her topknot, and two sets of blue eyes had locked like the sky and its reflection in a mountain lake. Melodie, Joan, and Helen observed, waiting their turns and periodically bursting into clapping ovations, the last doodling on a napkin with less than her usual intensity. It seemed Tamaki and Manny had been putting on a show within a show to rival the twins' performances, for Manny possessed a talent for transforming, incongruously and apparently at will, from fierce Yankee to gentle debutante.

Sammie and Natalie were part of the group sitting with Honey, and Kim had hit it off with Mori, possibly in the spirit of both being supremely non-verbal. In fact, both were so monosyllabic that Kim's knowledge of Japanese was enough for them not to need English. At the moment, there appeared to be a dip in Mori's popularity - possibly due to the appeal of Kyoya's French salon style gathering - and the two were having a one-on-one at a table not too far from Honey's. Though Hikaru could not have heard it, their conversation went on as follows, punctuated by more meaningful silences than there were words:

"So what you do for fun?"

"Not much. Drive around, go to the dojo. You?"

"I do drugs."

"What's your poison?"

"Pepsi."

"Pepsi's not a drug, princess."

"Not unless you drink as much as I do."

"Interesting. So how does it make you feel?"

"Like Coke."

"Coca-cola?"

"No, the other coke. Just weaker."

Sammie, for her part, had to suck on her cheeks to keep herself from smiling so much she could barely speak, so bemused she was by the idea that Honey existed, and that there was a market for him among women who came to the host club. After all, if SHE had wanted to fawn over a child, she would have probably picked a different venue. She even found herself wondering if perhaps Honey was a plant by the clinic staff to illustrate the concept of psycho-social regression.

"So, Sami-chan," Honey was saying, "Is it true what Hika-chan and Kao-chan say, that you were a real princess? With a TIARA?" Honey's eyes were enormous, and he dangled his legs all too happily off the side of an armchair that had been fetched for him - otherwise he couldn't reach the table.

Sammie chuckled. "Well… No, not really. I was only the prom queen in high school, Honey. That's not the same." She had to admit that it wasn't what she had been expecting, but playing along with this incongruously refined child was … infectious. After all, no little boy she had ever babysat stuck out his little finger as he drank his tea, or wore a tailored blue blazer so willingly. And it was so easy to call him honey.

"Oh…" Honey looked at her, making a show of appearing perplexed. "But I thought you were the Princess of Oregon. I even told Usa-chan: 'Usa-chan, we're going to meet the Princess of Oregon today, so we need to make be on our best behavior!'"

"Oh, that - no, Honey, I was MISS Oregon. I did wear a crown and I was picked to represent my home state, but that doesn't make me a princess." Sammie smiled, and was surprised she did not feel the usual pang that surfaced in her chest when she was forced to speak of her beauty queen days.

"Though I guess it's as close as an American girl can get to feeling like royalty for a day," said Natalie the blonde angel, who had picked Honey because she had a boyfriend who looked much like him at home. "Every girl dreams of that…" Her eyes suddenly looked faraway - and that fact that did not escape Honey's attention.

"Well, you're only 14, aren't you, Nata-chan?" Honey smiled winningly, and gingerly topped off Natalie's teacup. He put it back in her hands once he was done, and if looks could talk, his would have said that he wished that teacup was less teacup and more prom crown. "I'm sure you'll get your chance to be a princess soon enough. And you're probably the most beautiful girl in your year already."

On the lips of anyone else, the words would have come off as the clumsiest of flattery, but Natalie smiled as her blush ran down all the way to her shoulders. Honey turned to Sammie.

"So can you tell us what it felt like, Sami-chan? Being princess for a day? Nata-chan and I would love to know - and so would Usa-chan." He glanced from his bunny to Natalie and Sammie and then the rest of the group, his look a gleeful show of secret confidence. Sammie wondered, for the first time in her life, at what age children flaunting their imaginary friends ceased to be cute and became disturbing.

But no matter - she let her memory carry her back three years, when she had not only been Miss Oregon, but high in the running for Miss America. She had been popular. So popular that she was loved by the public even when she didn't win - that is, until an unflattering photo of her landed in a tabloid with the caption "baby phat," a play on her youthful appearance and something else she would have preferred to leave to the imagination. For a second, she felt physically ill and wanted to fade away, to plunge headlong into the pit of never-thin-enough that she had only just begun to emerge from.

She'd met many children during her "reign," kissed more foreheads than she could remember, and more little girls with high hopes than she could count has asked her the very same question as Honey. Back then, of course, she had always answered that it was a dream come true, but now it would be far too cliche to say just what her dream had turned into. She did not like to talk about it; she already thought she saw eyes, so full of pity and a repressed jubilation, all around her, day in and day out - the eyes of those who seemed to know the story of the princess who was not so perfect after all, and who had broken under the pressure and grown even more fat in the end. It was the sort of thing that made her want to spent the rest of her days chasing after a body she had, and loved, for what felt like only a week. The sort of thing that made her despise herself. The sort of thing that made her think, despite hundreds of hours of therapy, that no sacrifice would not be worth it to take back what was hers.

Still, this improbable little boy was something else entirely. For one, she could still barely wrap her head around him - after all, a little boy so interested in princesses, real or otherwise, was not something she could have conceived of before. And why on Earth did he want to know what it… felt like? It could not have been truly for Natalie's sake - there was no way his comment to her could have been meant to be taken at face value. And yet, he was so cute, and the whole interaction was so altogether surreal, and he seemed to have so few preconceived notions. And in a day or two he'd go back home and it would be as if none of this ever happened. There were no cameras that day, and no dreaded yellow psychiatrists' legal pads. How bad could it be?

"It felt… good at the time, Honey. But now I'm not so sure. And I paid a very sad price for it."

"Oh." Honey's eyes filled with all the sadness of the world. "Well… maybe it's a good thing that it was only a short while - otherwise you might have been ever sadder. I'm sorry it made you feel that way - and I'm sorry if me asking about it made you unhappy."

"That's okay, Honey," said Sammie. "It made me a little unhappy, but not in a bad way. If that makes sense." In truth, now that she had confessed it to someone who truly appeared to have no agenda that she could dream up, her chest felt a little less heavy, and she realized she would not have minded another spot of tea.

"Oh, well that's good!" Honey bounced up and down and gave his bunny's paw a squeeze, his sadness gone as suddenly as it came. "Because I really don't want you to be sad, Sami-chan. In fact, I was all set to give you a gift to make you feel better. Actually, maybe I'll do it anyway!"

He reached under his armchair, and pulled out a large gift bag that read "Laduree." He opened it, and extracted a box wrapped in ribbon, its top clear to reveal macarons in an assortment of pastel colors. "Usa-chan and I get them delivered every week!"

Prior to the host club's arrival, Hikaru and Kaoru had done their best to school their friends in each girl's food-habits, and despite his flighty host club persona, Honey had a good memory. He remembered that Sammie and Natalie were, in fact, lovers of sweets who had made great strides in coming to terms with the fact, and given that he was starting to get jittery for his own sugar fix, he had decided that it was as safe a time as any to have a snack. What he had not counted on, however, was that even though Kim and Mori were at a different table, a glimpse of the box would fall into Kim's peripheral vision. And one glimpse of filigreed writing and delicate pastry shapes proved enough to turn the dark-skinned sun-worshipper three shades lighter.

"Honey…" whispered Sammie as she caught sight of Kim turning pale, "I'd put that away if I were you…."

"But…" Honey's bottom lip quivered - for more than one reason, "Don't you like macarons?"

"No, Honey, I love macarons, and I'd love to share them with you later, but you REALLY need to put those away right now… PLEASE."

If Mori had not caught Kim's glass, it would have clattered to the floor.

Natalie, too, had realized what was happening, and was searching the room with her eyes for one of the twins, her hand reaching for Sammie's under the table.

It did not take her long, and as soon as she caught Kaoru's eye a few things happened in rapid succession.

"Shar. Bond air is go," said Kaoru, returning Natalie's signal, a tap on the nose with a spoon.

"Ten-four," replied the gyaru into her wrist, instantly getting up, closing the distance between their table and where Kim was sitting, and steering the taller girl deftly out of the room just as as Hikaru got up and tapped his spoon on a water glass.

"Attention, everybody! It seems like everyone's enjoying themselves, so I'm going to keep this short-"

Kaoru sighed, and stood up smiling by his brother's side. It seemed the time spent working out security measures had not been in vain. Honey and a roomful of girls with food disorders was a deadly combination - and yet to ban him from bringing sweets would have been unthinkable.


	11. You'll Always Have Paris

Kim was breathing hard as the gyaru steered her down the hallway. Her legs were failing her; her hands were shaking. If she had had more presence of mind, she might have been grateful for the firm set of fingers digging into her arm. But she was an automaton. It took all the self-awareness she had to stumble through the door and slam it behind her when a sign bearing the word "Restroom" appeared in front of her.

Shar remained outside.

Kim stood bowed over the sink, her fingers digging into the sides. Her mind was screaming.

Breathe, she thought. Breathe. One-two-three-It was useless. With each breath she fell more in debt for air; each gasp was more painful and ineffectual than the one before it. A black hole had opened up above her, the patterns of gravity wild and chaotic and unlike any she had ever felt before. Every atom of her body felt like a thousand pounds, sucked relentlessly into the vortex.

I'm dying. The thought, a frightened moth, beat wildly against the corners of her mind.

I'm really, really going to die this time.

Her heart raced, trying to drive home as many strokes as it could before its time ran out.

Kim's mother had been French and perfect, and for three blissful years, between 13 and 16, Kim had lived in Paris. She went to a prestigious girls' school, spoke fluent French, and ran amock the Left Bank, laughing her way down parkways dappled in sunlight and through street-side book fairs. Life was an endless round of peppermint sodas, Napoleon cakes, macarons, and gossip with friends. Come early August, the family would go down to the Cote d'Azur to drink in the sea and sun. After they returned, Kim's skin - a gift from her Caribbean father - always remained sun-kissed until December, and she would keep herself from wearing tights for as long as she could just to catch a glimpse of it from time to time. Her legs had been long and lean back then, and it was enough to notice the reflection of a bit of her thigh beneath her skirt in a window or mirror to be happy for the rest of the day.

But it was too good to last.

"Kim, I'd put something on if I were you," her mother had said, brushing on her lipstick after morning coffee. Mother and daughter shared the same frosty, impassive voice, and were both cold, straight-backed and beautiful in a severe, silent way, like a couple of Nordic pine-trees. The grandfather clock in the corner had just struck eight, and the maid was clearing the table. Kim could still remember the pattern drawn by the late September sunlight across the floor. "Your legs are starting to look a little lumpy - the ten coffee dates you seem to have per day are catching up with you."

Just like that, it was all over. After that day, each seam and waistband cut cruelly into her flesh, and the numbers on the tags had adopted a new and hellish meaning. She wept in the bath every morning, rubbing the fluff that had undeniably surfaced under her skin until what had been sun-kissed turned raw. And every night she fell asleep praying to a God she didn't believe in, begging him to either let her wake up somewhere on the shore of Cap Ferrat - beautiful and lean and in a Gucci bikini - or let her die in the darkness.

She had begun to shun her friends and classmates, and wandered the streets alone for hours after classes ended. When she came upon a pastry shop she would stare at the displays in the window for many minutes, weeping quietly for a time when she was young and happy and there were no consequences.

That October, her boyfriend died in a motorcycle crash. By November, she had lost her will to live.

One day, there had been a torrential downpour and Kim had kept walking, her umbrella folded in her bag, wishing the rain would wash her away. When the rain had gotten so strong she could not see in front of her, she turned into a shop and realized, in horror, that it was Laduree.

But the horror only lasted a moment. After all, she was wet, and hurt, and 16, and still grieving her first loss of love and childhood. Her trench coat hung like lead on her shoulders, and the cold had traveled up her stockings, which dug all the more painfully into every lump and bump. The soft pastels beckoned from behind the counter, and the muted greens of the filigreed wallpaper drew her in, closing comfortingly around her. She thought she heard a chorus of her friends' voices calling out, and memories of many a happy gossip in a sidewalk cafe over crepes covered her like a flood.

Before she knew it, she found herself pointing to flavors of delicate, Euro coin-sized meringue sandwiches behind the glass, asking for at least five of each. After she'd pointed to nearly every flavor, she scooped up all the cash she could find in her purse, most of it half-drenched - and when the cashier informed her that it wasn't enough, she all but slammed her credit card on the counter.

"Will that be to go?" the woman asked dispassionately.

"Yes," said Kim, recovering a momentary shred of sanity. "To go. Please."

But once the macarons had been wrapped up, she made her way to a remote corner of the tea-room and sat in a mint-green upholstered armchair that had been turned away from the center of the room. She placed the bag - as big as a hat-box - on the table in front of her.

Kim watched the rain fall, and within twenty minutes several hundred Euros' worth of France's most celebrated pastry had vanished. When she came to, she was sitting in front of a pile of tissue paper and cardboard dividers that seemed to take up three times as much space as the box had. Horrified, she had grown pale and jumped out of her chair, falling backwards over her heels as she had tried to back away from the monstrosity she had created. A few of the other patrons had looked up at her; she could not see, but she could certainly imagine their expressions. She wanted to run, but her legs would not obey her. She felt naked, her thighs anything but long and lean and on display for all the world to see, her face ashen, her grief painted across her body in broad, scarlet strokes. That was the first time she had felt the black hole open up above her, its pull a cruel cosmic wind that changed directions no matter where she tried to bolt.

Just after closing time, when she was walking away from Laduree at last, Kim had vowed that nothing like that would ever happen again. She even swore to a God she still did not believe in that not even the smallest grain of sugar would pass her lips again. But only a week later she had always found her way back - to a different Laduree tea room, of course, and emptied her wallet yet again. This time, she was more careful, and waited to open her treasure until she got to a bench in a secluded corner of a nearby park. Before long, the cycle of indulgence, guilt, and self-flaggellation had become a weekly ritual. She was sixteen, and it already felt like her life was over.

A year after the first incident, Kim begged her father to let her come live with him in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where everyone was fat and went around naked regardless, and where she had hoped Laduree would become a distant memory. But the black hole had followed her across the ocean, and now it had followed her here.

"Kim!"

The darkness split open, and she heard a deafening roar of what sounded like a crowd above her. A hand reached down, fingers splayed to meet hers.

"Kimi-chan!"

She felt a dull pain. Her surroundings began to come back into focus, and she realized she'd been clutching the sides of the sink so hard that she'd broken all but one of her fingernails. A trickle of blood snaked its way down the porcelain to the drain. Her hands still shook, and she had an odd sensation that they were a hundred miles away and did not belong to her.

…

Kaoru had come as quickly as he could get away - and in truth, there were two reasons. The plan, if anyone felt ill or had a meltdown, was to have Hikaru stand up and distract everyone with a toast. During the prep party in their room, Hikaru had joked that that would be easy to do - that he wanted nothing more than to announce to the world that they were a couple. And while they both laughed it off and decided, in a much more serious tone, that it was probably still too early and that it was best to wait, in the days that followed their understanding Kaoru had been by turns walking on air and sitting on pins and needles. Would people notice? - he wondered. Had they already noticed? After all, Hikaru could not stop smiling, and he missed no opportunity to look at Kaoru as if it was their wedding day already, and they had finally been left alone after a flurry of photographs, congratulations, gifts, and toasts. Everyone was probably snickering behind their backs that the brothers had at the very least sealed the deal already.

The arrival of the Host Club, who knew them better than anybody both in their roleplay personas and outside of them, had only made him more paranoid. Although he was happy that Hikaru was showing signs of maturity and foresight, happy to see his friends, and happy that they had not made as much of his condition as he feared, Kaoru had realized that when it came to the front he and his brother presented to the world, he preferred their relationship to retain a certain ambiguity. The impasse between them, after all, was among of the main reasons why people were drawn to them, but more importantly, people were free to enjoy the titillating tension for what it was and forget all about it until the next time. If things were defined - no, it wasn't that their roleplays would lose their appeal, but a series of uncomfortable questions would certainly be raised. And surely in time someone would wonder just how the twins planned to pull off their happily ever after as adults in the real world. And maybe, just maybe, Hikaru would then come to his senses and realize that he was NOT his mother, that he might NOT be forgiven for brazenly flaunting tradition and morality, and that for the sake of appearances he would eventually have to get a "proper" wife and children. Kaoru would be left as a kept man, and - and there was nothing wrong with that. After all, Japan had a long tradition of geisha and other mistress-types as "night-wives" for men in arranged marriages; even in the modern day the phenomenon was nearly normal. But that did not change the fact that it made him sick - sicker than the thought of Hikaru growing cold toward him one day and telling him it had all just been a phase. If that happened, at least, things would come to a logical conclusion, and his heart would not break every time his brother went back to his "real" family.

The point was, he wanted shot of those feelings. His fist itched for a violent meeting with his abdomen, just below the ribs; he wanted, desperately, to bend over a porcelain throne and forget, drowning his pain in blood and bile and sputum. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted it so badly. And Hikaru's blissful smile during the toast, along with his desperately clumsy coverup - "We're having a baby, everybody! And by we I mean our mother!" - had been the last straw.

Checking up on Kim was the perfect pretext, and the sobs he had heard from halfway down the hall coming from the restroom had made him walk faster.

"How is she?" he asked Shar, who was still guarding the door, withering look at the ready to deploy at anyone uninitiated who might have hazarded to join her in waiting for the facilities. His words were more an acknowledgement of her presence than a question.

"Not good." Translation: I'm not sure we can hide this from Sarah when she comes by. "I don't know what triggered it. I can't even get her to use words, much less calm down."

Kaoru's stomach began to churn, this time for an entirely different reason.

He lowered himself to the floor so his lips were against the keyhole. Shar looked at him expressionlessly, and reached out a hand to put on his shoulder. Kaoru shook his head, and she withdrew.

"Kim," he said in a quivering voice. "It's Kaoru. And Shar. Talk to us. Please. What happened?"

The door made no reply; the sobs had given way to heavy breathing through convulsing vocal cords, and then to silence. Kaoru put his hands on the door handle and squeezed it just to keep his fists from traveling to his gut and making him void the contents of his stomach right then and there.

For a second, he saw the scene as if from above - himself kneeling in front of the keyhole, the gyaru standing by his side. He wondered, vaguely, what he was doing in front of that door. What grotesque role of crisis negotiator he thought he was playing, and who he thought was trying to fool. And, for that matter, who he had thought he was wanting to go to medical school so he could help someone. Anyone could see that he could barely help himself.

"Kim. Kimi-chan. Give me a sign you can hear me. Say something."

Kaoru tried to focus his gaze on the stained glass insets of a window in a room just down the hall. The door was open, and he had found it by followed the cracks in the floor with his eyes as he waited - anything to keep himself from going even more mental than he already felt. He thought he saw the glass trickle down as the seconds inched past as the speed of centuries.

"Some'' - gasp - "Thing."

"Oh, God… Thank you, thank you, Kimmie. Thank God."

He took several deep breaths, trying to settle his stomach. He let his hold on the door handle go slack - realizing, in surprise, just how far away his problems with Hikaru suddenly felt. Had he truly feared that Kim was beyond the pale by that point, and that something truly awful had happened? Perhaps not - now that his rational mind had taken over, and yet… What did it matter, really, what would become of him and his brother in five or ten years? Meltdowns like this happened at Hazeltown every few days, but one happening here and now would mean that Sarah had been right, and the host club WAS interfering with the girls' recoveries. Fucking-a, they should've just risked getting pummeled within an inch of their their lives and banned Honey from bringing sweets altogether. In fact - God damn Honey. He had more grounds to be locked up at Hazeltown than any of the girls. Still - what was done was done, and if Kaoru didn't produce an alive and reasonably sane-looking Kim by the time Sarah came around to check on all of them - and Sarah, though young, was thorough, and wouldn't take "she's in the bathroom" for an answer; she'd wait… Not only would the entire operation implode, causing bitter feelings all around, but he and his brother would get the book thrown at them. For bending the visiting rules, for sleeping together, and for goodness knew what else. That much was certain. It wouldn't even matter if they swore up and down that Kim's breakdown was spontaneous and co-sleeping between family members who were not spouses was accepted practice in Japan. Come to think of it - EVERYONE might be punished, a slew of new restrictions would surely be imposed, and the Host Club would be banned for life without so much as a trial. And worst of all, if the day's events were really to set Kim back in the progress she'd worked so hard for, would he, Kaoru, even be able to forgive himself?

"Kimmie, listen to me."

He truly wasn't sure what he was hoping for - from what he knew of meltdowns, there was no knowing where things could go. He recalled a nurse mentioning that they were like grease fires; oftentimes, there was nothing to be done except to let them burn themselves out. And yet, he couldn't very well do nothing. He wouldn't be able to live with himself if he did.

"Are you listening?"

A few seconds passed, and Kaoru heard something he thought sounded like an "uh-huh" breathed out with a strangled sigh.

"Kimi, try and stay with me, alright?…" He began slowly, hoping that by enunciating each word he might calm his own nerves, too. "What I might say may make no difference. But Shar and I really are here for you. We are all here for you."

He paused, looked up at Shar and nodded his permission to put her hand on his shoulder if she chose - for she had withdrawn it, but looked like she hadn't given up hope of offering what comfort she could the moment he said the word.

"I know I can't meet you in the place where you are right now," he continued. "I want to. But it's your place. Only you know it. And, Kimmie, that makes you lucky. You KNOW YOUR PAIN. You've been there before. You've survived. You've come this far. That makes you special. You live side by side with pain. Every minute of every day. You might think it means nothing. That if you could put that effort to work elsewhere, you might accomplish more. But, Kimmie… It means everything."

The door stood silent, and it crossed Kaoru's mind that perhaps she had stopped listening. Heck, in a different life he would have stopped listening too, and laughed at himself for spewing such phony bullshit. It sounded ridiculous to hear it actually being said. Yes, he would have laughed, long and hard - if that phony bullshit was not the sort of thing that he told himself every time he begged his worse half to step back from the ledge.

"Hey. Is she gonna be okay?" Kaoru heard Mori's voice above him. Flat and cool as always, but not without a note of something - were it anyone else - that he might have identified as worry. Kaoru wanted to tell him yes, and to go away before those on the verandah decided that something had to be seriously wrong for two out of six hosts to have gone missing in action. But Kim had been Mori's guest after all, so he grudgingly bit his tongue.

"We're working on it," he said, without looking up, hoping Mori would get the message that way.

He took a breath, and focused his eyes back on the keyhole.

"Kim, are you there?…"

A low wheeze followed a few seconds of silence.

"Good, Kimi. Stay with me. You're doing great. YOU'RE great. You're not like the people who build a wall against their pain." Like Hikaru - he inwardly chuckled - for every time his brother got upset it was as if he'd been taken by surprise, and was the sort of person who did not like surprises, so he dispatched the feeling off as quickly as he could manage. "You're not like the people who pretend that they can smile and laugh through anything. Because that wall does come down, Kimmie. And when it does, you are ready. Kimmie, you are… fucking amazing for what you're doing right now."

"Is everything okay with Kimi-chan?" Honey's voice cut through Kaoru's words from somewhere behind him.

Crap.

Kaoru spun around in spite of himself. Sure enough, there was Honey, clutching Usa-chan to his chest, his lip shaking.

"Was it something I did? I'm sorry, Kao-chan!"

"Honey, not now." Kaoru did his utmost to keep his voice level. "Go back. You've got guests."

Honey did not move, and Kaoru noticed that the smaller boy's eyes were filling with tears.

No? Alright. Fine. Nobody's listening to me. Nobody ever listens to me.

And yet, he found himself realizing that it was one thing to make everyone promise that if they suspected someone was having a freak-out, they'd stay calm and where they were, and let security - the two sets of twins - diffuse the situation. It was quite another to actually expect people to follow through on something like that, especially if those people were the host club, and new to the idea of triggers and meltdowns altogether. Kaoru found himself wishing he didn't have bigger fish to fry at the moment. That way, he might have been able to get away with dashing his brains out against the walls to avoid seeing the shit-show it was all about to turn into.

"Kimmie - you there?"

He waited for an affirmation. A low wheeze came, more quickly than the last time.

"Look. You're fucking amazing for the fight you fight every day. And we might not be able to meet you there, but we're sure as hell pulling for you. We want you here. We want you back. Just as you are. Please. Don't give up. Never, never, never, never give up."

By the time he'd finished, Kaoru was speaking so feverishly even he could barely tell one word from the next. But what surprised him was that his voice sounded far more level and measured than he felt. A metronome running out of control, but a metronome nonetheless, racing with no other aim than to calm the woman beyond the door.

He didn't know how many minutes had passed. He couldn't be sure how soon Sarah would appear. He listened to the silence behind the door.

"Kim. You're HERE," he whispered desperately - settling on a last-ditch effort to change direction. "You're in Hawaii. Not anywhere else. Hawaii. It's a good place. With orchids, and palm trees, and sun. Stay here. With me. I want you here."

"Kaoru! I don't have that many tricks left up my sleeve!"

Bloody- Mother- Shitter- Son of a-

"I don't know how much longer I can hold down the fort - I might need to kiss you with tongue next time to keep them distracted!"

Kaoru slumped against the door, suspended from the handle by his hands. He couldn't bear to look at his brother.

"Hikaru. What. are. you. doing. here," he squeezed through his teeth. "What are you ALL doing here? Do you have any idea what's going to happen if the staff find this many of us crowded around a single bathroom when there are five other ones?! They'll know EXACTLY what happened!" Kaoru's voice was breaking, as if he'd suddenly gone back in time four years, and his vocal cords had a mind of their own again, making the pitch of his voice jump three octaves without warning. "Anything like this will be banned, who knows what'll happen to visiting hours, and it'll all be over!"

Except, it was already over. Both Kyoya and his debaters and Tamaki and the bevy of feral princesses he'd brought out of their shells were peeking around the corner just down the hall, their expressions more curious than anything else.

Kaoru wanted to vanish. Hikaru came over and put a hand on his shoulder, and it made him want to cry.

"Kaoru, don't worry," he finally heard Natalie's small voice. "Sarah's not due for 10 minutes. I've been timing. And I know you told us not to, but we wanted to see if we could help. We won't tell anyone." She looked around herself for reinforcement, as if startled by the impact of her own words.

"Yeah," said Helen. "You have no idea how good it feels to be asked about something besides our goddamn treatment plans for a change." She spoke in a level tone even more rarely than Melodie, but in that moment her voice was a tempered, velvety mezzo.

"And to meet new people," said someone else, whom Kaoru couldn't see.

"A-a-and to see s-something besides those b-b-loody four w-walls."

"Yeah, you have no idea how much fun we've been having," said Sammie, who had come forward. She reached out to touch Honey's shoulder, and her face had glow that seemed new to Kaoru. Honey lifted Usa-chan's paw for her to high-five.

Those who had been peering from around the corner had started to emerge and approach the restroom door, all muttering some form of affirmation, and Kaoru realized that there were more of them than he thought.

"We all love the Host Club, seriously," said Gaby. There was a red corsage rose pinned behind her ear. "Even me, Kaoru. I haven't had this much fun arguing in a long time."

"Eating disorders are hell, but the treatment's worse," Manny's voice rose above the rest. Kaoru caught a glimpse of her face, and he realized that the usual speaker for Hazeltown's multitudes hadn't said anything sooner because her icy mountain lakes were melting down her cheeks. "You guys are amazing for even trying to pull something off like this. We won't do anything to ruin this. I'll see to it personally."

"We'll do what it takes," said Shar, "We'll even keep working security."

"In shifts," Gif added stolidly, tossing a wry smile at Hikaru. "We want to have fun, too."

Kaoru looked from girl to girl like a man pardoned minutes before the axe met the chopping block. And all the eyes he saw - from Manny's melting mountain lakes to Melodie's dark coals - were kind. He let himself sink to the floor.

"But…. What about Kim?… It's not right…" Is it not too high a price? - he wanted to say. How can we let the good times roll when someone offers blood sacrifice to the porcelain throne just behind the wall?

"Oh, come on. It's not your fault I'm afraid of a goddamn cupcake."

The door had opened behind him, and Kim stood looking at those gathered. Her face was the usual mask of accidental sexiness, if a bit blotchy, but the small smile that danced on her lips was something new.

"We all have our problems. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't live."

She knelt down, and touched the hand of a wilting Kaoru.

"And just so you know. Even if you never get to med school, you still saved my life in there."

Kaoru felt like he was ready to fade away and become air - the squall of feelings that had been the last he-knew-not-how-many minutes had been nearly more than he could handle. He let himself fall backwards into Hikaru's waiting arms, forgiving him silently for the several days of clumsily concealed glee, and for the displays of affection that were too public even for them.

"Kim, home sugi**…" he heard himself saying, but he couldn't have been sure she had heard him, because Honey had appeared and pushed Usa-chan in her face.

(**too much praise)

"I'm sorry, Kimi-chan!" his eyes were brimming with tears again. "I'm really, really, sorry!" A tear slid down his cheek and he wiped it away with Usa-chan's ear, too frenzied to look for his hanky. "Here, do you want to hold Usa-chan? He's sorry too! He says he never wants to eat macarons again!"

Kim took Usa-chan, wincing a little at the m-word, and stared into the bunny's button eyes. The toy was not without signs of wear and tear, but it was obvious he had been incredibly well looked-after. The child who owned it certainly loved it very much, sewing up seams that tore and mending the applique of the mouth when it began to unravel. The pink felt on the paws and ears looked like it had been replaced multiple times, and the rest of the fur, though far from brand-new, was clean and neither tangled nor pilling. It lay in a regular pattern, as if someone had brushed it that very morning.

She had built her defenses so high since she left France that she could not remember the last time anyone had given her something that held so much meaning.

Before she knew it, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

"No, Honey," she said. Though her eyes watered, her face was nearly straight, a testament like no other to her Gallic breeding. "You and Usa-chan can eat anything you want. Just don't be like me. Don't eat to dull pain. Don't eat to fill a void. Don't eat to run from things like I did."

Her chest began to shake, and for a few moments, no one could tell if she was crying or laughing.

...

When Sarah came to check up on the Host Club and their guests toward the end of visiting hours, she saw a curious sight. The sun was sinking over the valley outside, and the boys and girls were seated at the tables with white tablecloths, just as they were an hour ago. But instead of the hubbub of ten conversations at once the voices would echo and run into each other, ebbing and flowing. Some people sat with their arms around each other. Some people wept into each other's jackets. The Hitachiin twins were circulating serving drinks, and a large stuffed rabbit with what looked like tea stains on his muzzle was being passed around the room. Whoever held the rabbit would stand up and start to speak. Some spoke tentatively; others spoke angrily, and many voices would start to quake midway. And when anyone began to weep, the tall boy in the glasses would come over and hand them a small pack of tissue with a bow.


	12. How Japan Circumvents Prostitution Laws

"Well, that Kyoya's certainly a fox."

Visting hours were over, and Gaby and the twins had found each other shoulder to shoulder amid the chattering crowd of Hazeltown denizens flowing back to the South Wing. Although Gabs still wore the same standoffish, devil-may-care expression, and although her voice was still as matter-of-fact as could be, it seemed to the twins that she had a new bounce to her step - and that made them happy.

"Well-well!" said Hikaru, throwing an arm around her shoulders. "Look who's been converted!"

"Gaby found her ho-ost, Gaby found her ho-ost!" Kaoru sang to the tune of ring-around-a-rosie, flanking the girl on the other side and mirroring Hikaru's hug. He reached around the small Latina's head to pluck the corsage rose from behind her ear, and suddenly noticed Manny from the corner of his eye, gesticulating violently and mouthing something that looked a good deal like the word "NO. Before Kaoru had time to react, Hazeltown's fearless leader took advantage of an eddy of people around a corner to seize both twins by their collars and whisk them bodily away.

"Hey! What the-?!" Hikaru tried to fight her off, but her eyes were big, menacing saucers, and she maintained a firm grip so firm on both their shirts that he gave up very quickly.

"Don't. Encourage. Her!" the Yankee hissed.

"W-what? Why?"

"Yeah, what'd we say that was so bad?" Kaoru gasped, somehow managing to maintain his usual, slightly more conciliatory tone despite being handled in a manner that bespoke the Yankee's pet-name all too well.

Manny let her grip slacken on the twins' collars as she pushed past Sarah, who was checking off attendance at the door, and steered the duo, flustered and a bit worse for wear, to a remote corner of the common room.

"Ok, I'm going to cut you some slack for not knowing this, since you're still relatively new," she said as soon as they were out of earshot of the others, "But Gaby THROWS HERSELF AT GUYS." She raised her eyebrows emphatically and lowered them quickly, pushing both Hitachiins into the same overstuffed armchair. "The feminist chip on her shoulder is just a front."

"Hold on." Hikaru took a few deep breaths, grateful that Manny's grip on his shirt had finally ceased to obstruct his airway. "I think you're overreacting. Let's say Gaby likes Kyoya. There's no way anything can… happen, though, is there? I mean… how would they?- where would they?- and WHEN?!" Even given the slacker regulations they'd negotiated for the Host Club with Sarah, it was hard to imagine.

"Besides," said Kaoru, straightening his ill-used collar, "Kyoya's not that kind of guy. And I'm pretty sure he's in host-mode right now. Hosts don't, uh, get involved with guests - I mean, I really don't think it's ever happened." In fact, he thought, there had to be some unwritten rule about it. Ostensibly, it COULD occur, but if it suddenly became known that a host preferred one girl over others, the idea of making EVERY girl happy as club's reason for being would be that much harder of a sell. And any girl who wanted to date a host would have to share him with the rest of the student body.

"No, that's not even it," said Manny, a note of exasperation in her voice. She lowered herself onto a pouf so she was eye-level with the twins, and adjusted her voice to barely above a whisper. "That's the scary part. Nothing NEEDS to happen. Gaby's the sort of girl who dates, marries, and has three kids with a guy before he's finished saying hello. And if she's led to believe that she actually has a chance with someone, she'll read far too much into it, get far too emotionally invested, drive herself and everyone around her crazy, and take ten years to get over it. Why do you think I don't live with her anymore? Because she wouldn't stop going on about some guy she dated for a summer TWO YEARS AGO. It's worse than high school. I feel bad for her, but I feel worse for everyone who had to put up with her."

"Two years?!" Hikaru whistled under his breath. He glanced at Kaoru. "Although, to be fair, it's not like haven't been over this. The host club is about flirting and clever conversation, but it's no place to go looking for a date."

"Yeah, we thought she knew that…"

"She does." Manny smiled sullenly. "And there is nothing wrong with flirting and clever conversation - as long as you don't inhale. We need to send the message that Kyoya is mustard gas."

"Wouldn't that be a little rash, though?" asked Kaoru. "She looks like she had a good time - do we need to ruin it?"

Manny sighed. He didn't need to say it in as many words, but she knew what he meant - if Gaby were made to feel bitter about the experience, who knew - she might rat out them out for what happened to Kim, just out of spite. She liked to think she knew her best friend better than that, but she also knew that hell had no fury like an upset Gaby.

"Maybe not. But let's try and nip any notions of Kyoya being 'hers' on the bud, shall we? Or they'll grow into sequoias overnight."

"Alright - roger that," Hikaru allowed himself a smile, now that it seemed Manny had no more designs to strangle him. "That said, of course, I've kind of been itching to make a lame joke about Kyoya being less fox and more Nogitsune**."

(**evil shapeshifter fox-spirit)

…

"Kaoru. YOU. WERE. FABULOUS."

"Hikaru, I really-" didn't do that much, he wanted to say, but he could barely speak in the face of an onslaught of his brother's lips, which seemed to be everywhere at once the moment the door closed behind them after lights-out. Hikaru had kept a surprising cool as they had made their way back "home" and during their talk with Manny, but it seemed that before the latch had even clicked shut, Kaoru's shoulder blades were pressed into the wall, his leg had somehow ended up wrapped around his brother's waist, and the toes of the other one were barely brushing the floor. His last rational thought was whether the campaign Hikaru's hands had mounted against the blazer on loan from Kyoya would leave the poor article of clothing without buttons.

"You're making way too much of this," he gasped as the torrent of kisses had momentarily made its way to his cheeks, then his jaw, then his neck.

"Oh, hush, you have no idea how much I want you - how much I want to BE you right now. My brave, handsome brother - saving lives! UNGH! If this is what it feels like being married to a doctor, sign me up!"

"Fuck it, Hikaru, I didn't really save anyone's life, it's a figure of speech…" Kaoru did his best to fight his brother off, but Hikaru seemed far too determined to bring his desire to be Kaoru to fruition and smother him into the wall until they became one. It took a few seconds to seize hold of his brother's wrists and slow his frenzy. "Cool your pants, it's still a long way off…"

His hands unexpectedly restrained, Hikaru looked at his brother slightly dazed, his pupils blown out of proportion even given the darkness. He had already lost his own blazer, and his lips were quivering and swollen from laying claim to every inch of his brother's skin he could reach; his own skin was all but steaming. Kaoru wondered if he, too, would look much the same in the mirror. Although he was still convinced that Hikaru's surge of lust had a most irrational basis, and although he had always been cooler by nature, he could not deny that being quite literally swept off his feet had moved him in all the right places. In fact, it was a struggle just to make his tongue obey him.

"Can we… talk about something? While we're both still, uh, vertical?" Kaoru's voice sounded thick, and he found himself annoyed with it for so easily betraying just how much a certain part of him wanted to do anything but talk.

Hikaru drew a small breath - Kaoru could almost see his spirit returning down to earth by slow degrees, and his mind ascending back up into his head. And yet, his brother did not look unhappy, which was something new. He only looked… muddled, as if he had just woken up from a nap.

"Sure, 'course," the older twin said, blinking. Kaoru let go, and Hikaru put his hands on his brother's shoulders, letting them slide down his arms until their hands met. His lips spread into a smile, as if he was seeing his love for the first time after a long parting. "What's on your mind, milady?"

Hikaru's voice had turned a touch sheepish, despite the flirtatious choice of words - but he had, after all, promised he be more mindful of Kaoru's feelings, and nothing about his manner right then suggested that he was reluctant to do so, despite the less than optimal timing. And that was promising.

"Uh, well, I was just wondering," Kaoru began as Hikaru took him by the hand, motioning him away from the wall and to sit on the windowsill a few feet away. Kaoru breathed a sigh - thank goodness, at least his brother had enough presence of mind not to have the talk on the bed, where things had a history of quickly devolving into giggles and then some. "I'm really sorry to bring this up now," he continued, "But how exactly do you imagine this happening? I mean, living together as, uh…" - Man and wife? Spouses? To say that the words still sounded outlandish would not have done an iota of justice to the feeling.

"What do you mean, princess, how do I imagine it?" Hikaru raised his eyebrows, the flirtatious veneer now melting over more than just his words. "Please elaborate."

Kaoru sighed. He would have preferred a slightly different approach on his brother's part, but Hikaru in host mode was still marginally better than Hikaru in sailor on shore leave mode. At the very least, it would be enough for his purposes.

"Well, you know how mom… is mom and how she breaks taboos all over the place? But she's still got a proper family, a husband and kids. That kind of thing is a pretty important symbol of status and security if you're the chairperson of a company. And in keeping with that, if you had a, uh… wife, wouldn't you be expected to produce her at events and parties and company functions? In fact, isn't it even more important for a man to have arm-candy at things like that? And for that, uh… arm-candy to make a show of being a good mother and do charitable work on the side? And if you choose to remain single on paper, your board members will be shoving their daughters at you until you either die or give in, whichever comes first."

Kaoru paused, hoping he had made himself clear enough. He truly hoped he would not have to explain just how painful the necessary evil of a beard for Hikaru would be. Truth be told, he almost thought himself selfish for feeling that way. Who was HE, after all, thinking he'd have his brother all to himself when Hikaru had all the social and professional obligations of the first son? Who was he to expect that the laws of the world would be bent for his convenience? Still, the thought alone of… sharing Hikaru, even if it was just for appearance's sake, made him feel as bad as he did just a month ago, when he would both wait for and dread bedtime, and a glorious mix of pain and pleasure would follow, and end the same way every time… Kaoru saw himself standing over a porcelain bowl once again, and felt a surge of self-pity…

WHEN. THE HELL. WAS IT GOING. TO END?!

Kim, at least, could give Laduree a wide berth. Things were not so simple when your trigger was your own brother, with whom you were madly in love.

Before, he would try to repress thoughts about the future and the precariousness of their world after an intimate moment with Hikaru, but paid for it when he least expected as the thoughts came back and consumed him. Now, he was getting better at not letting those ideas - including the compulsion to lock himself up in the bathroom - color everything he saw and did. He was getting better at focusing on the present moment, at giving those thoughts the time of day, acknowledging that there was nothing he could do, and letting go. Possibly, he had Cynthia and his medications to thank for that.

It also seemed like things were getting better now that he saw proof that Hikaru was not as flighty as he thought. But it still hurt to actively engage with his fears - and he knew he had do, because he couldn't very well just be letting go of them all the time. There WERE things he could do. Productive things, like talking - even if it still felt like picking up a microphone and confessing his deepest, darkest desires to a crowd ready with blunt objects. Especially since the progress with Hikaru - well, it didn't seem like it had been enough, now that a host of new problems had arisen.

In fact… He wondered if it ever WOULD be enough. Whether he would ever fully get better. He wanted to go to med school, help someone, but who was he kidding? Maybe he was destined to waste his life and his love, committed yet alone, unable to break free. For a moment, all he wanted was to see himself passed out, preferably forever, in some fancy bathroom with matching velvet towels and marble countertops, sprayed every hour with designer fragrances conceived just for him.

He made a move to get up, but Hikaru was holding his hand and pulled it down firmly.

In fact, Hikaru had been holding his hand through the entire tirade, though Kaoru had grown too frenzied to notice it. And when younger twin grew silent, Hikaru took the hand to his lips and kissed it. For a few seconds the older brother did not say anything, and then Kaoru realized, to his horror, that Hikaru was LAUGHING.

"Hikaru! You son of a!-"

Luckily, it did not take long for Hikaru to have had his fill of snickering. He put Kaoru's hand back in his lap, still holding it between the two of his as he squeezed it gingerly.

"Kaoru, you dumbass, do I look like the goddamn crown prince to you? No one's expecting you to ride around in a friggin' convertible waving to crowds, or to forego having a real job. I'll just say my wife is a very private person, and has a job saving schizos that keeps her busy. Mom always says that facts are only as good as the records you keep. Adopting a kid's easy as pie, your name's already as good as female, especially with the Kanji you use to write it, we'll get you a new maiden name, something common on the order of "Hitachi" - no "in." For the sake of the neighbors we might need to dress you up in heels and grow and dye your hair, alter your features a bit with clever makeup and plastic surgery…"

Kaoru found his jaw dropping farther with nearly every word he heard. Before long, Hikaru's rousing voice and features to match began to fade away, and all Kaoru could think, was "dear God, he's actually thought this through…" Except, that was not even the most surprising part. There was something new, or perhaps something he hadn't noticed before about Hikaru that shone through at that moment. It wasn't quite so much WHAT Hikaru said but HOW he said it that left no room for objection of any kind - not from Kaoru, not from anyone. Hikaru spoke and looked as if he literally could not imagine things NOT going his way, with the remarkable result that every conceivable and inconceivable argument that formed in his interlocutor's head crashed against his words like waves on a granite embankment. Kaoru tried to imagine himself in the shoes of the average, run-of-the-mill conscientious objector, and found himself thinking it best to save his time and sanity. After all, the man across from him gave off the impression that he had thought things out so well, he would always be a step ahead. And to think that Hikaru did not even have the firepower of a company chairmanship to back him yet. In fact, if he didn't know better, Kaoru might have thought he was talking to… oh yes. Oh, goodness, it was almost frightening… No matter who their biological father was, Hikaru was certainly his mother's son.

"-Ohmygod, KAORU!"

Kaoru had not noticed the world around him go black, and suddenly he saw his brother's face above him, his expression that of a frightened first-time mother.

"Kaoru, are you alright?!"

Kaoru smiled, though his head still swimming. He noticed his brother had caught him and was cradling him in his arms. The two were still perched on the windowsill.

"Ok, seriously, I'm sorry for the part about gender reassignment surgery, THAT was a joke, but the rest of it, we can make it work, alright? No vice presidents are going to be shoving their daughters at me, you hear me? I've got everything I need right here."

Kaoru extracted himself from his brother's arms and sat up, and Hikaru let him.

"You need to stop being such a worry-wart, Kaoru. And you need to trust me a little more."

Yeah. No shit.

Kaoru could not help feeling stupid. Where he had lost sleep, Hikaru had solved the problem for himself and moved on with such maddening ease! And yet, perhaps if it really was true, and he had not hallucinated the fact that Hikaru was growing up to have almost too much of Yuzuha in him for comfort, it really would be alright. In fact, it was already like mother, like son in how both she and Hikaru let things roll off their backs, and seemed to be the darlings of fate in always getting what they wanted. And their mother, after all, had always inspired confidence, no matter how madcap her convictions were, so, heck, why could not Hikaru do the same?

Kaoru let his thoughts shoot across four timezones to Tokyo and his mother. It never did matter, now that he thought about it, that Yuzuha's personality was prickly and her favorite way of showing affection resembled abuse more than anything else. Kaoru had always known she meant well, pouring it on Hikaru more gingerly because he was the first son and in need of toughening up. And she had always been Supermom; the sort of mom you could call from the scariest corner of Tokyo at 4 in the morning, and who would be there to pick you up in a bullet-proof limo in 10 minutes flat. Granted, she would make you wish you had been shot down by Yakuza all the way home, but once it blew over, not only would she never mention it again - she would once again forego the one hour she had to catch a nap on a busy night of deadlines to help you with your French homework. Yes, Yuzuha was one of a kind. Almost.

"Are you alright, Kaoru? Can I get you something?" His brother was looking at him curiously, his arms politely in his own space but poised at the ready to help Kaoru the moment he said the word. "You know you DID pass out for a couple seconds, right?"

"No, no, Hikaru… It's really okay. I'm just amazed at how… easy you can make things sometimes." He looked at his brother with what he was fairly sure was a clumsily concealed admiration.

"Well!" Hikaru must have noticed, because he blushed, cocking his head. "I try - I'm king of the castle, after all. That's my job. I try not to let my lady worry. Of course, that's a tall order." He punched the "lady" playfully in the arm. "Look, are you SURE you're okay? I don't need to carry you to bed, do I? Because that's one thing I can definitely do."

"I don't doubt it." Kaoru was slowly starting to feel less woozy, and even allowed himself a smirk. It seemed as if Hikaru really had, for the moment, acquitted himself well when it came to solving problems so he, Kaoru, would not have to. "I'm more concerned about what will happen when we get there."

"Hah," Hikaru cracked a cheeky grin to match Kaoru's, taking the latter's attempt at banter as a sign that all was well and no smelling salts would be needed. "Well, I had an idea on that point." He slid across the windowsill and placed his chin on his brother's shoulder, pulling him into a hug. "Since we've established - I hope - that I'm not going to leave you for some silly marriage of convenience, I thought we'd practice for when you're my wife by first pretending you're my girlfriend."

"Wait a minute… I thought me being your 'wife' was just going to be on paper - and for the little old ladies behind twitching curtains who might see us come and go from our house."

That said, of course, he did not exactly dislike the thought. Hikaru already liked to call him "milady" and occasionally held the door for him, even though he was hardly more feminine than his brother. And cross-dressing was something that he viewed rather calmly and even enjoyed - courtesy of the host club, and what he knew of some of the trends in high fashion. Still, it would have been nice to know where things stood.

"What I'm saying is - roleplay is one thing, and real life is another."

"Ah. Of course. Well, that's the beauty of it, you see. Behind closed doors we can be anything we want. Best friends, brothers, gay partners, husband and wife, individuals of all or no gender. Anything. Heck, we can even have me be the wife some days."

Briliant. Oh course. Damn that Hikaru. He'd thought of that, too.

"Alright. I guess that would be fun." Kaoru jumped off the windowsill and offered a hand for Hikaru. "But I assume today's not one of those days?"

"You assumed right," said Hikaru, jumping down as well and eschewing the proffered hand. "To be honest, I kind of wouldn't have minded if you were born a sister. Man, oh, man, if you were a girl I'd have picked your cherry about three years ago. Girls are easier. From what I hear they bleed and cry once, and then they're done."

Kaoru squinted, letting his lips curl into a wry smile reminiscent of Manny's when she wasn't taking any nonsense from anyone. "If I were born a girl, I'd make your life a living hell for five days out of every month, and if that time of the month was late - oh, momma. You'd wish you were one of the Green Berets Honey sent to meet their maker."

Kaoru laughed and spun around on his heel in the middle of the room, suddenly overcome with mirth over a vision of himself - in pink pajamas and bunny slippers, tub of ice cream in hand and soppy drama on the DVD player - scolding his brother as the latter waited on him hand and foot through a visit from Aunt Flow.

"Nah, you should be grateful there are some problems we just don't have. Although I wouldn't mind an excuse to beat you up on occasion."

"Alright, well, I'd still like to try it on for size. Especially since we DON'T have that problem." Hikaru caught his brother's hands and joined him in the middle of the floor, spinning them both around for half a turn. "So tell me, what kind of boyfriend do you want me to be? A nice one? Or a roguish one?"

"You're always nice when you want something. Or should I say pathetic. Let's try roguish."

"M-kay. One roguish boyfriend, coming up." He pulled his brother to him and ran his hands down Kaoru's back, letting them settle just above the curve of his buttocks. He lowered his voice, speaking nearly into Kaoru's lips. "It's getting pretty serious, just so you know. We've been on however many dates you think is proper. I've taken you for a ride on my motorcycle and I'm a little rough around the edges, but I've been the perfect gentleman so far - so you can put out. If you feel like it, that is, which I hope you do."

Kaoru smiled in answer, a little bemused, and Hikaru kissed him, pulling his head back playfully by the hair as he looked into his eyes from above. The hazel sunbursts caught the diffuse moonlight, and Hikaru noticed that Kaoru's skin had the intimate whiteness that he only ever saw in the night, and that made him go mad at the thought of anyone besides himself touching it. It was all he could do to keep himself in character, and to maintain the facade of coolness and detachment.

"You're such a beautiful girl, Kaoru. Who would've thought I'd get so lucky - that a princess like you'd would give a guy like me a chance." He grinned, doing his best to make his smile that of a rich boy who grew his hair long, wore leather jackets, and had fingers and lips that smelled of clove cigarettes. "Now take off your clothes." He gave the younger twin a soft push in the chest. "I don't like waiting."

Kaoru obeyed, slowly sliding off his blazer and unbuttoning his shirt with all the tremulousness of a girl alone for the first time with a new love, on a brink of a future she could not guess. The pressed white shirt - far less pressed by this point - fell to the floor.

"That's it." Hikaru said, appraising what he saw with a dispassionate face and a smoldering gaze. "Your pants, too. Strip. All the way. Let's see the goods."

That task complete, Hikaru put his hands on his brother's shoulder and hip - his flesh already crying out for more - and guided him to a reclining position on the bed. He lay by his side, still clothed, and ran a hand down his skin, drinking it in from the neck down.

"Where will you have me?" he whispered hotly into Kaoru's ear, the words as good as sex on his lips. Kaoru could hear his brother's belt click as he unfastened it, and leather slid past leather and metal. "I support a woman's right to choose - although I'd prefer to see that pretty little face while we fuck, just so you know." His pants open for business, Hikaru had moved on to unbuttoning his shirt.

"I'm a virgin. And I don't want anything that'll hurt." Kaoru had closed his eyes and focused on breathing alone. Every inch of his skin was already burning.

"Backdoor virgin too?"

Oh, Christ, you know the answer to THAT question - "Yes."

"Remarkable - you're a bastion of virtue in a depraved world, princess," Hikaru sat up and tossed both of Kaoru's legs over his shoulder to reveal a narrow thigh gap. "I guess sumata** it is, then. One of the many ways our fabulous home country circumvents the laws against prostitution. Not that I'm paying you."

(**….on second thought, I'll just let you guys google that one. :))

Suddenly, he felt very warm and soft inside - a feeling inconsistent with the persona he had assumed for the evening. They often did it just that way, and by that point it felt like coming home, even though it had been a while since the last time. Of course, him sitting up on his haunches was something new, and reinforced the power dynamic they were trying on for size in a way that made his flesh catch fire all the faster.

"You bought me dinner," Kaoru chuckled.

"Ok, then I guess you're my whore."

…

Five minutes later, Hikaru was enjoying himself so much he could scarcely believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

"Oh, fuck, Kaoru, you're so tight…" he moaned - and he wasn't even usually a moaner. "Tightest damn thighs I've ever felt. Don't worry, though, nothing about you will be tight any more once I'm done with you. No one'll want you then. They'll try, but they'll know I've been there first, and they won't want you anymore. No one will want you but me, and you'll be begging for me to come fuck you."

He threw his head back and gasped, nearly laughing, as a particularly strong shudder of pleasure washed over him like a wave.

"Tell me you're my bitch, Kaoru."

"I'm your bitch, Hikaru."

If their mattress had been of poorer quality, its springs would have been squeaking. If their bed had not been bolted to the floor, it probably would have rocked and moved at least a foot.

"Say you're a dirty slut for a plate of fugu."

"I'm a dirty – UNGH - slut for a plate of fugu."

"Good girl."

...

"Where the hell did THAT come from?"

The twins were lying side by side slightly dazed, and Kaoru was chuckling. Their limbs and their sheets were tangled, the sweat had most likely soaked through to the mattress. Kaoru felt far more relaxed than he had been in a while - and he could not have moved if he tried.

"Do-on't pretend you didn't like it," Hikaru smirked - having propped himself up on his elbow, he was wiping the results of both their pleasure from Kaoru's torso with an edge of the sheet.

"Oh, I LIKED it. But I think if I were really a girl and we really had just started getting serious, I probably would've bolted and never called you again on account of your being a misogynistic asshole."

"Well, maybe it's good that you're both my brother and my woman, then." The cleanup done, Hikaru pulled Kaoru to him, and kissed his favorite place aside from Kaoru's mouth - just above the temple. "You have no choice but to love me."

"That much is true. I wouldn't let anyone else boss me around like that. Not even mom, although… can I tell you a secret?"

"Mhm - always."

"When you take charge you remind me so much of mom, it's not even funny. But what's even more disturbing is how hot it makes me."

"Hah! Now who's the sicko!"

The first spasm that had run across his chest had been a silent one, but it did not take long for Hikaru to begin to laugh out loud, wheezing and all but screaming in glee. He laughed for what felt like an eternity, hugging his brother's torso, and when he finally recovered, he looked up with a winsome expression that made Kaoru instantly forgive him for making him wonder whether there were limits to their confidence after all.

"Ok, ok, ok, sorry…" Hikaru tried to speak, but was still snickering into his fist. "I guess I never thought I'd say this, but it sort of makes sense. I'm like mom, and you're like dad. We don't make much sense as a couple biologically, but we knew we were meant to be together since the day we met - and DON'T WORRY," he added quickly, seeing Kaoru's brow darken a bit, "I'm not going to go bed-hopping on you. Even if something happens and you can't get it up anymore. No metaphor's perfect, alright?"

Kaoru allowed his head to fall back into the pillows and smiled once more. "Speaking of, when the heck DID we even 'meet,' as it were? Do you even remember?"

"Well!" Hikaru jumped up again, propping his chin on his elbows and gazing at his brother. "My earliest memory of you was when you were sitting on the couch in the nursery. I think we were about two. And Black-Cat - remember Black-Cat? I think her real name was Belladonna, and she belonged to Mom, but we called her Black-Cat - She started walking towards you. And you probably thought she was a panther or something, because she was as big as you, and you got so scared you fell over backwards and tumbled to the floor. I saw that and I thought, I'm going to MARRY that guy. Or else he won't survive past age three."


	13. Hey, We Just Met

Kaoru had slept far more deeply than he could ever remember doing, and when he awoke the alarm clock read 2:00. It was still dark, and he could not have been asleep for more than a few hours, but he felt refreshed, as if he'd spent a night in the mountains.

He had awoken, he realized, because he was hungry. And thirsty. It felt like the most basic drives, which had been fading slowly over many weeks and months, had come rushing back all at once, and now his body was suddenly screaming to live, to scale great heights, and to drink in the sustenance he had long denied it.

His eyes fell on a sleeping Hikaru beside him. Even as he had sat up to check the time, his brother seemed to refuse to slacken his grip on him - instead of hugging him around the chest, his arms were now around Kaoru's torso.

"I really do love you, Kaoru. I want to have everything with you," the younger twin recalled his brother muttering as the latter's eyes sealed shut and he drifted off to sleep not long ago. "I'm sorry I'm such a possessive mother fucker."

"I forgive you, Hikaru."

And he had - or would. After all, as long as Hikaru would continue to listen to him when he had something to say, and to support him in pursuit of his goals, he knew better than to take his brother's dirty talk at face value. The fantasy dynamic that had allowed Hikaru to be sexist and crude had merely gone to show just how much they both enjoyed the primal possessiveness of their feelings. And possessiveness was alright, really, as long it went hand in hand with respect, and words like bitch and slut stayed safely tongue-in-cheek. Indeed, it really did seem like Hikaru was learning to respect him. His kneejerk reaction might still have been to laugh at Kaoru's angst, but Kaoru's "need to talk" during a passionate moment had been a test that Hikaru passed, no bones about it. In fact, the exchange that followed made Kaoru realize that his brother did not just live in the moment, but was perfectly capable of tying together past, present, and future. Perhaps Hikaru really was growing up. Who knew, maybe even the wherewithal not only to dream but to follow through that had shown through in Hikaru's eyes was more than just Kaoru's imagination. And even when Hikaru had dredged up the rogue from the deepest corners of his Id, he played the part in a way that made it clear that the lady could say "no" at any moment.

Kaoru got up from the bed, peeling Hikaru's body gently away from his, and walked to the dresser to search for something to wear. It was odd, but all the things he had been turning over in his mind had made even his body feel stronger. The more he realized that he and his brother had a chance at a relationship that was real and not imaginary of his part and carnally driven on Hikaru's, the less it hurt to think about anything changing. Paradoxically, it suddenly seemed that if someday his and his brother's love ran out, the two really would be able to shake hands and part as friends. And it would be bittersweet, but life would not be over, because at least for a while they would have been on the same page, they would have both done their utmost to try, and they would have been in love, looking not each in a mirror but forward at a common future.

He found a clean set of underwear and pajamas, and slipped into them. There would be no food until 6 a.m. at the earliest, but the dining room stocked herbal tea and water through the night, and his throat was parched from his and Hikaru's session of sweating through the sheets a few hours earlier. He pushed the door, squinting at the light from the nurses' panopticon, and tiptoed out of the room.

The dining room chandeliers were turned as low as they could go, and the room had more shadows than light in it. He found his way to an industrial-size water cooler, and poured himself a drink. He let his eyes close half-way as he sipped the cold liquid, and was starting to feel just about blissful when he noticed he was not alone.

…

Gaby sat on her bed, her arms folded, and ardently wished there could be something she could break against the floor.

If Romeo and Juliet, in their day, had been star-crossed lovers, then Gaby was a woman for whom the stars never seemed to align to any end at all. Anyone observing her life from afar would have been quick to note that she had many things - and yet it always felt to Gaby that the things she had were like marbles. The moment she seemed to get a few of them together, all the rest would roll away and disappear before she knew what had happened. When her grades were under control, her weight would balloon; when all was well with her friends, she found that her parents were angry with her; when she managed to drive her weight down to 100 with all the austerities she could muster, her boyfriend would announce he was leaving her.

To add insult to injury, both her older sisters had been the perfect daughters. Both possessed Hollywood beauty, had finished college and law school at the top of their year, and settled on the Upper East Side with their equally perfect husbands by the time they were 25. Every time Gaby visited them, their lives seemed to picture of domestic bliss. Her oldest sister, in fact, was married to her sweetheart since age 15, and the two of them were expecting their first child.

Gaby, for per part, was woefully single. There were plenty of boys all around her of course, but some she already knew she would never marry, some rejected her, some strung her along, and some wanted only a certain something. Some she could talk to, but the timing was never right, or the boy was from the wrong side of the tracks, or talking was all he wanted to do with girls. More often, though, things simply fell apart and all Gaby ever felt at the end was disappointment. A relationship was the one thing she could never seem to pin down and get just right, EVER, and boys were the one thing that seemed out of her control. Of course, it was only the one thing - in all other respects she might have been golden. But when it came to falling short of perfection, one thing was all it took. As a result, Gaby grew at once more aloof and more desperate with each romance, driving her girl-friends mad with excessive confidences and saddling her boyfriends with unspoken expectations that they could feel all too well.

Eventually, she could no longer keep the anxiety out of her head. She starved herself and purged with exercise until her mind was empty - until at least her body could be under control while everything fell apart. And sure enough, in time everything did. Within months, Gaby's grades fell so badly that although she had once been at the top of her class, there was no longer any hope of attending Harvard or Yale like her sisters had. And now that her food-issues had gotten so bad she had to be sent to this prison in Hawaii, she would not even graduate high school on time. Most likely, her parents had chosen the place because it was as far from New York as they could find, and because she was an embarrassment.

What was worse, she had not felt ready to come. She was not ready to give up hope that she WOULD get it all perfect, and finally placate the self-hate. She had not felt ready to get better, and she still didn't. Most likely she would be here a while.

And then the host club happened.

She had come to the host club largely out of curiosity, and because she had an inkling that there was something the twins were not telling her. After all, she had wondered to herself - all girls, especially girls in patriarchal societies, were brainwashed from an early age that the best thing they had going for them was beauty, and beauty faded with time. As such, why would any self-respecting girl spend her afternoons with boys who were essentially a public commodity? Every high school girl wanted a boyfriend - it was a status symbol like no other. And yet the host club, the twins had insisted, was the antithesis to dating. In fact, it seemed like rather a waste of time unless one was already in a relationship - and then, who would prefer a host over their own boyfriend? The inverted geisha model as a way to pass the time would of course make sense if everyone was committed to arranged marriages, but even if it WAS Japan, it was also the 21-st century. She could not wrap her head around it.

When she came in, she sat with Kyoya quite by accident. His table was the closest to the door.

"Hello, princess," he said, standing and pulling out a chair for her alongside those already seated. "If my memory serves you go by Gaby?"

He certainly was handsome, in an exotic, intellectual way - and not just because of the glasses. The high bridge of his nose and his smooth cheekbones bespoke an aristocratic lineage almost as much as the restrained tembre of his voice - cool and quite faithful to the way Tamaki had described him.

Gaby swallowed, and repeated quietly to herself, He's just a host, he's just a host. To preempt the familiar, flustered feeling that was about to stay the words in her throat, she raised her proud sharp chin and nodded.

"Yes, I'm Gaby. And I'm still baffled by the host club." She had, after all, a reputation for cutting right to the chase. She thought she may as well use it.

If Kyoya had been surprised, all the surprise was concentrated in a single raised eyebrow.

"What would you like to know?" he asked.

While not exactly monosyllabic, Kyoya was also not the sort who seemed to enjoy hearing himself talk. It therefore took a spirited game of twenty questions from the guests, who quickly followed Gaby's lead in growing curious, to reveal a few things that were indeed new. For one thing, the club was not just a club, but a full-blown not-for-profit organization with an endowment that Kyoya oversaw, and the twins had either been too airheaded to realize it, or too cautious to open the can of worms that was the commodification of pseudo-romantic interaction. And whatever Gaby's qualms indeed were on such a topic, she could not help feeling impressed when she had asked to see just what sorts of numbers were involved. In fact, her impression did not wane even when Kyoya helpfully reminded her to divide by 100. The only troubling thing was, of course, that no matter how much the twins had tried to play up the democratic, guest-centric aspects of the club, there were still many girls, and only seven boys, which made it impossible for the boys not to be put on pedestals. In a society where men held all the power as it was, it hardly seemed fair.

Armed with the notion, Gaby launched a further attack on her burgeoning interest in Kyoya.

"It sounds to me like the women who visit the host club don't have much agency," - she threw down the gauntlet. One a bit tired, knowing her, but for a new sparring partner it would work just fine, she had decided. "They have about as much agency as the typical customer that comes to a store, but that isn't a lot, because they're manipulated by image."

The other girls grew silent and were eyeing each other, some with surreptitious smiles and some with ill-concealed eyerolls. Oh yes, Gaby's up to her old tricks - they seemed to be thinking - and it's going to be a cross-cultural shootout to boot! We can make a fortune scalping tickets to this thing. Margo looked like she thought Gaby ought to change up the record in the jukebox.

Only Kyoya was unruffled. "What if the gender roles were reversed?" he asked with a faint smile. "Would it be better or worse? What if the hosts were women and the patrons were men? That's how it's been for many years."

Oh my. Answering with a question she could have perhaps predicted, but he seemed to be one step ahead in knowing that consumerism was not truly what she had wanted to talk about.

"Whatever the merits and drawbacks of commodifying pleasure," he continued, as Gaby seemed to have taken his question to be rhetorical, "Japanese culture is one where many many things are repressed and social interaction in the real world is heavily regulated. The host and hostess clubs are settings where you can have encounters you would not have otherwise, and play with gender roles in ways that are otherwise unacceptable. There's more agency then you may think."

The argument seemed decent, she had to admit, but by that point she had also regrouped and was ready. He proud chin went up again, and she pressed her lips.

"If seems like you guys think you're running quite the revolutionary enterprise," she quipped. If deflection was the name of the game, she thought - then two could definitely play at it. "But there's a difference between revolutionary and ass-backwards, pardon my French. I'm sorry, but taking an age-old geisha trope and turning it on its head does not make for change in any real sense. All you're doing is trying to foment a revolution in a theatrical heterotopia that had nothing to do with the real world."

Kyoya turned his head and the lenses of his glasses caught a splash of sunlight from the window. "Fair enough, but if there's a way to get people to show up and start a revolution without first promising them bread and entertainment, I'd like to hear about it. And even if there is such a way, I'm pretty sure the host club would still be more popular."

"Today the host club, tomorrow there are citizens who might actually heed a call for change," Margo put in helpfully. She seemed happy that someone had given Gaby food for thought, since the latter - for once - did not look like she had was itching to spew a counterargument before her opponent had finished speaking.

Gaby had noticed this too, and saw Kyoya turn his eyes back at her almost expectantly after he had smiled at Margo in seeming thanks for summing things up more succinctly than he could. When Gaby spoke again, she found her voice rising.

"That's not good enough!" she said. "Exceptions to the system are just pressure releases - and actually, they do more harm than good. They keep society from reaching the critical mass it needs to make big changes."

"I don't know," said Tara, using her tongue to turn over the toothpick that hung from the corner of her mouth, "I think a tolerant attitude to even having those pressure releases in the first place is pretty damn revolutionary. I mean, from what I understand in Japan it doesn't matter what you do in your spare time as long as you keep up appearances. Like heck that'll happen here."

"You're absolutely right," said Kyoya with a restrained yet warm smile at Tara, then Gaby again. "We might not be ready for big change as a nation; we might just be ready to tolerate deviation from the norm in small, controlled doses. But even if putting pinholes in the sheet looks small now, those pinholes will grow, and they will have an effect. Revolution occurs when people are used to trying something new. Otherwise, when your critical mass happens there's no one to pull the trigger."

Over the course of the conversation, Gaby slowly realized that there was more than one more reason why Kyoya was… remarkable. She might not have gone so far as to say that all men - but many of the men she met were put off by her forthright manner and quickly labeled her a feminist hulk. She did, after all, like to make her voice heard, and refused to cede to anyone - regardless of gender or seniority. As a result, some would avoid her - as did the twins, having quickly figured out that when it came to Gabs, there were definite landmine topics. Others would feel that just because she often spoke as if formulating an extended marxist-feminist thesis, they needed to push back. Kyoya did neither of those things. Instead, he presented his own thesis calmly and with no seeming agenda, as if inviting her to take it or leave it. He defended his views without getting defensive, and when she spoke, he let her words marinate in his mind before replying. In fact, she may have been imagining things, but his eyes seemed to find her even when she was not speaking. When someone else spoke, he would always glance at them and then at her, as if wondering how - and if - she would parry the argument. In fact, it did not just happen with Margo; it happened every time. Gaby had taken up keeping track. And he asked questions she did not expect that helped her flesh out her thinking.

Damn it.

Before she knew it, she had realized she was enjoying herself, and that there were perhaps things in this world that made it worth while to forego the boyfriend hunt for a few hours. Granted, it made her feel like a fabric of how-things-were that she had conceived and had always considered air-tight had received not just a pinprick, but an all-out blow with the blunt end of a scissors. But she had managed to push the thought to the back of her mind, and when she'd told the twins at the end that Kyoya was a fox, she really had been proud of how she had been able to say it and mean just that - that he was man whose attractiveness she thought fair to acknowledge, and nothing more.

Except, she realized in the dark, it was no use. Because there was also the- Oh, goodness, it was probably nothing, and she was afraid to even look at it again and find something that would confirm or deny the suspicion. And yet, the damage was done. She could not help thinking about how Kyoya was as close to perfection in a man as she could imagine, and how he probably wasn't even real, because the host club seemed to be quite heavy on the performative element. Indeed, he might as well have been an apparition for how far away he lived.

Still, she missed him already, and thought about how much better everything would be right then if he were sitting by her side with his arm around her. She imagined him kissing the side of her head, and telling her with a touch of warmth in that cool voice of his that he'd decided to stay, that he would visit her again and write to her, and when she got out they would be together. Her parents would probably not mind a son-in-law like Kyoya. The thought felt like the twist of a knife, and she hated herself for it.

In fact, she hated herself so much and felt so sorry for herself, she wanted a pie. An entire pie, all to herself. Hell, she wanted ten pies. Hang self control - much good it ever did her. Of course - OF COURSE Kyoya would never think of her that way, even if they had met under more favorable circumstances. Hazeltown did not allow mirrors, but as she ran her hands over her belly she was sure that she was a blimp compared to all the perfect Japanese girls with tiny waists who probably surrounded him back at home. Even if he did like to talk to her, what did it matter? No matter how much she starved herself, those were not the genes she had, and she would never compare. Because that's what it all came down to in the end, didn't it?

She looked at the bed across from her, still empty after a month, and found herself missing Manny as well. Having gone to boarding school since age 14, the Yankee had developed an uncharacteristically angelic patience for others' relationship drama. At first, she had not been averse to playing night-nurse to a grieving girl-friend. She would wake up, and sit with her, and listen. And yet even Manny had eventually declared that enough was enough. Gaby suddenly felt bad for her. Manny HAD been a good friend, even though she was prone to saying things that she would have done better to keep to herself. She suddenly felt bad for having been secretly happy when her best friend at Hazeltown had broken up with her boyfriend. Because, truth be told, it had not made her own loneliness less in the slightest.

She needed to get out of that room, she realized. The room felt like a sarcophagus, and the walls were closing in on her.

Except, she would never get out, she caught herself thinking. She was stuck. Stuck in that body. Stuck in this tomb. She was cursed - and nothing would ever get better. In fact, she'd probably die there, alone, and sad over a stupid boy, and a blimp, and that was all that what ever be written on her tombstone. And if she didn't die, then for sure she would soon lose all her marbles. Not that she - the fat, deplorable failure - could ever keep them all together in the first place.


	14. And This is Mental

"Gaby. What are you doing up?" The industrial-size water containers seemed to shine, and collected all the light that was in the room to illuminate what during the day was the drinks bar. Kaoru's radar jumped to high alert as he discerned just who the petite silhouette that emerged from the shadows belonged to.

"Oh. It's you." Gaby quickly masked whatever emotions might have come through in her voice with annoyance. "I just wanted some water." Her eyes slipped down to his hand. "Same as you."

Kaoru reached out for another water glass, hoping to win a few points of favor, but she snatched it out of his hand he before could bring it to the dispenser.

"I can fill my own water glass, thank you." You're not at the damn host club anymore, and I'm not a goddamn princess who can't do a thing for herself - she wanted to snap. In fact… leaving her room and its oppressive, netherworld stillness had not done anything for her in the slightest. The common-room was just as windowless and still, and the self-hate and frustration had festered. And now, it seemed an outlet had appeared. After all, weren't the twins partly responsible for what had happened?

"I don't need your help, I really don't." She almost spat the words.

"I'm sorry, Gaby," Kaoru did his best to keep his expression placid, and she turned away from him, flipping up the faucet handle with a snap. "I didn't mean to offend you." He had a mind to say goodnight and bow his way out, but checked himself. Come morning, he had an inkling, things might get worse.

She turned around and set the glass on the counter so hard it might have cracked.

"You know, I don't need any help from you OR your brother. OR your goddamn friends."

Kaoru thanked the lord that he had had time to put on his Zen-face. Gaby's words did not exactly fit the mold of Manny's extremist theories, but one thing was certain: if words were peanuts and Legos, he would have choked on his earlier sentiment that the girl who stood before him had had a good time that day.

"You all think that you're God's gift to the poor Hazeltown girls," she continued, her volume building, "That you can just come here and rescue us and make it all better. You think that you can just solve all the world's problems with tea and clever conversation. That if you sit down and learn a song with me, or hand me a fluffy bunny, or tell me to hang up and find someone better, suddenly everything will all be alright. Well, it's NOT." The muscles of Gaby's chin, forehead, and jawline seemed to be working doubletime to keep back tears. "There are some things you can't fix - you can only make them worse."

"Gaby, what makes you think that? No one ever said we were out to fix anything."

And that much was true - they hadn't. If they had been anywhere else, if they had not been who they were, if they had not known the girls as well as they did, they probably would have acted much the same. The fact that their actions made any difference was purely incidental.

As she had shouted at him, he tried his best to take in her despair and let it dissipate. After all, what would HE want in a punching bag? He'd want it to be quiet, and not to fight back. And if he let it show that it had gotten to him, that might egg her on all the more. Of course, staying calm, cool, and collected would not keep her from trying to push him off his center - she simply had too much negative energy crying out for release. Just as with Kim, perhaps this was best handled by riding it out. The challenge was that while Kim was his friend, Gaby was determined not to be and had ignored him.

"You know," she said acridly, "I should kiss you too, like that slut Manny did. It WAS you she kissed, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but-"

"Maybe that's what I need to see the goddamn light, a kiss from a little freak like you."

"Gaby, I know you're hurting and I'm sorry" - he chose his words carefully, swallowing the insult and sidestepping the word 'help' as best he could, "But I don't think that would solve anything."

"Oh," she let out a cruel laugh, "Would your brother mind too much?"

"My brother has nothing to do with it."

She had taken a step towards him, and looked like she would have taken another if it meant stepping through a wall, but aside from raising his hands to his chest all but instinctively, Kaoru had not budged.

"Listen, Gabs," he said slowly, "You're REALLY hurting. I can see that. And I don't care what you do to me to make yourself feel better: you can kiss me, or you can leave the shards of that glass embedded in my forehead. But I might not be able to be there for you anymore if you do either. And I want to be there, Gabs. More than anything."

It took a few seconds, but the words appeared to have done the trick. Gaby's face registered a quake of at least 8 on the Richter scale, and she visibly collapsed, bending her knees and covering her face with her hands.

"I…. I don't know-" Why I do this, she had wanted to say, but the words were swallowed by sobs. That son of a bitch - she wanted to wail - how did he KNOW exactly where to press? How did he KNOW that she was lonely? That she had nobody, and that she was so angry with herself that all she ever did was push people away?

Kaoru put aside the glass he had been holding like a lifeline throughout the conversation and took a step towards her, but she backed away, her face wet and tied into a knot. She avoided his eyes.

"It's okay. Just let it out."

Gaby turned away and wept bitterly into her fist for several long moments. Kaoru stood close by - not so close so that if she wanted to lash out she would reach him, but close enough to make his presence felt. When she surfaced from her flood of tears, she saw that he was holding out his hand, and in that hand was a napkin. She stared for a second at the thing, but despite Kaoru's most ardent prayers her expression took a turn for the worse, and she screwed up her face as if she had seen a spider.

"I have to get out of here." She turned around, and walked briskly to the door, emerging in the common room. She was gasping for breath and her chest quaked as if each influx of air gave her the exact opposite of what she needed, yet she had no power to make it stop.

Kaoru followed at a safe distance until she paused in the middle of the darkened hall. Only the nurses' box shone bright as a 24-hour convenient store on a corner, and made the rest of the place fall deeper into shadow.

"I have to get out," she said into the darkness and spun around. "I can't take this anymore. I hate my life, I hate this goddamn place, and I hate YOU-" She threw a glance at him from head to toe and scowled. "Whoever you are."

"Gaby," Kaoru once again did his best to choke down the insult. "I get that you're upset…"

"I want out. I can't breathe. I need some air."

"Are... you having a panic attack?"

"NO!" she shouted. "I just want OUT!" She grabbed a pillow from a nearby armchair and threw it violently in Kaoru's direction, but it fell short and landed on the ground.

And in truth it did not appear like she was having a panic attack. She was neither holding her breath nor breathing too fast. She was heaving, that much was visible, but that alone did not necessarily signify a panic attack - Kaoru already knew that much from his time at Hazeltown. She was wringing her hands, and had begun to sob again, and before ten seconds had passed she had hurled another cushion - which Kaoru caught.

"I want out, out, OUT! OUTSIDE! Out of this goddamn PLACE!"

"Out of this building?"

"YES! ANYWHERE BUT HERE!"

"What is going on?" Sarah had emerged from the nurses' station, looking slightly bedraggled. Her eyes were red, betraying the fact that she had had several espressos in the last few hours on account of working into a second shift, as a colleague had had an emergency that had delayed her.

"Yeah, what the hell?"

Kaoru turned around and caught sight of a yawning Hikaru, who had emerged from their room. In all likelihood, he had woken to find himself alone, and followed the noises.

"Kaoru, are you okay?"

"Gaby says she needs some air, and she's throwing cushions. I think we need to take her outside - or there might be an incident."

Kaoru motioned his brother over and let him lean against his shoulder as the latter wiped sleep out of his eyes.

Sarah let out an exasperated sigh. "We can't go outside. It's past curfew."

"But this is an emergency."

"Gaby throwing cushions is not an emergency. In fact, you boys need to go back to bed. Gaby will do that sometimes - she'll throw a things around for a while and then she'll be fine. Plus, my replacement's going to be here any minute, and there are things we need to do every time a shift ends, so we can't leave the nursing station unless there's an actual emergency…"

Kaoru looked at Sarah as if his faith in the medical system had plummeted by fifty notches.

"An ACTUAL emergency?!"

"Oh, or goodness' sake, don't look at me like that!" Sarah snapped at the younger twin. Gaby had picked up a pillow and was pummeling a nearby sofa as she sobbed more and more pitifully about how she could not breathe and needed out. It looked as if the violence was barely doing justice to her feelings. "An actual emergency is if Gaby starts throwing more solid objects, or attacking one of you - which is why I need you to go back to your room. If you stay she might take it out on you, and it's that much more likely that there'll be an incident, and then we'll have to write an incident report, and then none of us will get to sleep tonight, that's for sure-" Her look got increasingly desperate as she realized that her words were not having the effect she wanted, and neither twin had budged. "Ok, you know what - fine. Let me know if she starts throwing actual punches."

Kaoru stared at her, trying to hide the fact that he was not a bit horrified. It was hard for him to imagine that this young woman had desensitized herself so much that she could simply look past a behavior that was so clearly not normal. How much time did she have to have spent around pain, that she could dismiss it so easily as she went off to fill out the same paperwork she did day in and day out behind a piece of glass? And at the end of the day, didn't there have to be a better way? You COULD lock up a person with their distress and wait for it to run its course, but if Gaby kept saying - even in her half-crazed state - that she needed to get outside, then could it be that there was something to it?

"Sarah, is there really no way to get outside?"

"No, there isn't."

"There's no way at all?"

"No, there is NO way to go outside unless there's an emer-"

She made a guttural sound that may well have been a curse in an Arabic dialect.

"So there IS? Sarah, please…"

"IF THERE'S AN EMERGENCY. Hika-"

"Kaoru."

"Kaoru, do you KNOW what an emergency entails in this institution? It means paperwork. Tons of paperwork - as far as the eye can see. It means patient interviews and witness interviews, it means calling the EMTs and paging attendings-"

"Do you have to call the EMTs for every emergency?"

"Well… no…"

"Sarah, what would you do if Gaby started throwing punches?"

The nurse caught her breath and swallowed.

"I'm… not sure, to be honest. It's never actually gotten to that."

"Sarah-" Kaoru did his best not to succumb to his desire to join Gaby in acting out what he was feeling. "Look, I realize that if you go out there with her you'll need to stay out there with her, and who knows how long all the paperwork will take. And this might be totally crazy. But maybe there's a chance Gaby knows what she needs right now better than we do-Hey!"

Focused as he was on his exchange with Sarah, he had almost forgotten about his brother hanging off his shoulder, and when Hikaru punched him in the arm - not even that hard - it came as a surprise.

"There, does this count as an emergency now?" Hikaru asked, stifling a yawn into his hand. Kaoru cocked his head towards him with a skeptical look, but the older twin was unperturbed. What's more, his brain recharged with oxygen, he hopped in place and got on his tiptoes, sticking his head out from over Kaoru's shoulder and plastering the most glassy-eyed smile he could muster across his face.

"Because there's actually something I've been meaning to tell you, Sarah. You see, I'm actually Gaby and Gaby is me. We had a bit of a Freaky Friday experience last week when we had Chinese for dinner, and we've been stuck this way ever since!" He rocked back on his heels, holding on to Kaoru's shoulders and peeked out from over his twin's other shoulder. "To that end, do you know any good exorcists?"

"Nell's bells," Sarah moaned - staff were not allowed to swear around patients. She pressed her lips together and jabbed her finger emphatically at the twins several times as she struggled to find the right words. Finding none, she let herself fall into a nearby armchair instead, and breathed in and out several times.

"I HATE this job someti-i-imes…" she wailed into her hands, then looked up quickly. "Don't… tell anyone I said that." She suddenly seemed much younger than her years.

The twins looked down at her - one a touch skeptical and the other as amused as only a hit of Meth could have made him.

"Oh, of course." Hikaru switched shoulders again, and made a show of giggling into his fist, turning the world's tiniest key at the side of his lips, and tossing it away. "We won't tell."

"Not a peep." Kaoru let the skepticism in his smile give way to something reminiscent of Edo era beauties bred for court intrigue and back-bedroom deals. "In fact, we've already forgotten."

Right on cue, a candelabra clattered to the floor as one of Gaby's pillows found a target.

"Oh, fu-DGECICLES."

Sarah pressed her face into her hands again, but this time it did not take her long to recover. She got up, rapidly exhaling, and dabbed her eyes with the end of her sleeve.

"You know what, fine - you win. Let's go. Gaby," she called across the room, "You too."

The twins each took hold of one of Gaby's arms, and Hikaru extricated the pillow she was holding from her grasp. She was still shaking, but she did not struggle as they followed Sarah to the panopticon and stopped when Sarah instructed them to wait on the threshold. The nurse then walked over to a filing cabinet, and slowly pressed several buttons of a code she seemed to struggle to remember. The lock whirred, she slid the drawer open with a sigh, and extracted three thick plastic bracelets - GPS trackers that the residents were required to wear if they left the wing to go outside after 6 p.m. She motioned Hikaru, Kaoru, and Gaby to hold out their arms with all the severity of a school cafeteria worker who had no sympathy for those who forgot their lunch money.

"Right then. Now at least there'll be hell to pay if any of you end up running away, and I'll end up suspended instead of flat-out fired," she said, closing each bracelet with a snap. "Now where in the deuce is the bug spray?"


	15. But Here's My Address, Drop Me a Line

Kaoru left Hikaru and Sarah in the gazebo to write the incident report by the light of conveniently motion-activated lamps and went over to check on Gaby. Sarah's replacement had not arrived yet, but her partner was a boy-nurse named Andy, whose help did not prove difficult to enlist, as he had always been sweet on Sarah. In less than fifteen minutes, the four of them had found their way to the English garden adjacent to the South wing. As Kaoru walked over to the bench by the fishpond where Gaby was seated, he could only hope that the place would suit her purposes. Although a thick wall of verge separated them from the hills and the ocean beyond, the sky stretched wide above them, deep and dark and sultry as only a tropical sky could be. The stars seemed so close you could reach out and touch them.

"Hey." He sat beside her. "Better?"

She did not answer, but her breathing had indeed grown quiet, and she was sitting very still. She looked up at the sky, and seemed to be wishing it would pull her into it.

"So tell me, what was that all about?"

She avoided his eyes.

"You won't get it."

"I promise I'll try."

No answer followed, and he decided not to force it, focusing on the chirping sounds of the night instead. By all accounts they had at least an hour, and if all Kaoru did was sit with her, it would still be a stretch of time where she could be outdoors as she wanted, and where she would not feel like she had to go whatever it was alone.

"You know how they say the course of true love never did run smooth?" The girl said at last, her eyes still fixed on something in the cosmos only she could see. "What do you think about that?"

Kaoru paused for a moment, mulling over the question. A few weeks ago, he had told Manny that when you found the right person things suddenly ceased to be complicated, and in some respects he really felt that was the truth. He had never doubted that his feelings for his brother were the purest of unconditional love - and not just brotherly love. That part was easy. The part that was harder was not knowing if Hikaru felt the same, and whether there was a place in the world for a love like theirs.

"I think that finding the right person is only half the battle," he said. "More like one percent of the battle, actually."

"Well, other people make it also seem so easy." She breathed a deep sigh. "My sisters… they fell in love like normal people. With their classmates. They never had any issues to work through. There were no problems with distance, with jobs, with money, or with parental approval. Their husbands are the right guys in every respect. And I…" Her voice quivered.

"Gaby, how old are your sisters?"

"Twenty-six and twenty-eight."

"And you?"

"I'm almost eighteen."

"There's your answer, Gaby."

"Don't say that!" she spat, breaking eye contact with the sky. "Don't tell me I have the rest of my life ahead of me or whatever." She looked morosely at her feet. "Marisol first got together with her husband when she was only 15."

"No, what I mean is, your sisters have always been at a different time in their lives. They wouldn't talk to you about their problems if you were only eight or so at the time. Of course it seemed like their lives were perfect. But everyone has issues to overcome. And everyone is afraid and unsure about something."

"Everyone, sure." She gave a dejected laugh. "But not everyone struggles with the kind of shit I do."

"Try me - what kind of shit, exactly?"

She sighed, and ran her hands up and down her thighs, only to ball her hands into her cloth of her pajamas in disgust.

"Well, let's say you've met the perfect person." He heard the anger rising in her voice again. "No, I don't want to say perfect, because you don't even know them. But let's say there's something different about them. And let's say that you just get the feeling that in another life you two might have had a chance. But you don't - not here and not now. Because of… cultural issues. And… physical barriers. That's why I want to know" - She stared at her shoes -"Is there really only one person for you? Can… a feeling really conquer all?"

"I don't know the answer to that, Gaby." Kaoru could not help but smile at the irony. "But I think I can relate more than you know."

Gaby hazarded a look directly at him for the first time, but his eyes - which were waiting for her when she looked up - did not express the sort of sadness she expected. In fact, they expressed no sadness at all. If she were not as surprised as she was, she might have felt a twinge of regret for a chance at schadenfreude that had been denied her.

"For a long time I felt I couldn't be with the person I wanted to be with," said Kaoru. "Also because of cultural issues and cold, hard, physical facts."

"What… changed?" The Latina asked slowly, her look suspicious.

"I think I realized that if there are… cultural issues and physical barriers, that might just mean that you need to be patient and tolerant to a fault to make it work. But it doesn't mean you have no chance."

"My… person seems patient. But I can't know for sure."

"Good. But the real question is, are you?"

Gaby looked down again, and chewed on her lip. Kaoru let her cogitate, but when she had looked up again, her eyes were blank.

"It doesn't matter. Even if it were worth it, I'd have no way to know. It's probably all in my head anyway. He's only a host after all."

Ah - so it WAS Kyoya. "Cultural and physical barriers" could have been said about almost anyone, but the word "host" made it unambiguous. Kaoru sighed. As Manny had feared, something had indeed been set in motion. And for better or for worse - whether or not hugging Gaby around the shoulders and congratulating her on finding "her host" made him partially responsible - he was already there with her, and it was up to him to do his best to pick up the pieces.

"Gaby…" He fumbled for a way to let her down easy on his friend's behalf. But no thoughts came, and he realized he would need more to work with. "Can you tell me EXACTLY what happened this afternoon?"

"Oh." She winced, as if it was painful to remember. "Well, there were a bunch of us, and we talked about… Ok, so I began by saying that I didn't understand the host club, and it turned into this big discussion about gender and culture and consumer economics." She sniffed, and suddenly seemed very interested in examining the lint on her knees. "You know, the usual." She paused again, as talking seemed to come as easily as pulling teeth. "And it was all fine, more or less…" she swallowed, "Until THIS happened."

She reached into the breast-pocket of her pajama top and extricated something as if it was at once a piece of her own flesh, and something terribly shameful. She handed it to Kaoru and looked away.

It was a business card, attached to a corsage rose. One side bore Kyoya's name and his title as the Chief Financial Officer of the Host Club, along with contact details - all in Japanese. The other side had the same information in English. That in itself was unsurprising - Kyoya acted older than his years in more ways than one, and gave out business cards almost routinely as publicity for the host club. Far more interesting was a note scribbled over the Japanese side, the handwriting unmistakably that of the card's owner.

"You are an impressive conversationalist. Best of luck in all you do. -K."

The nature of the message, Kaoru had to own, was very much Kyoya, with whom subtlety was the name of the game. True to form, the note asked for nothing, promised nothing, and insinuated nothing. And yet, the very fact that it existed made Kaoru wonder whether perhaps he did not know his friend as well as he had thought. For all anyone knew, of course, he may have simply been giving credit where it was due. But to think that Kyoya would find any girl… impressive, much less admit as much to her, was mildly discombobulating. And then, there was the odd matter of the rose.

"Gaby, how did you get this?" Kaoru asked slowly, looking at the side of her face so that if she decided to look back, he would miss no detail of her expression.

"It was…" She was still looking away, over the verge, though it seemed that speaking was growing less painful by degrees. "Well, when we all decided to get up and check on you and Kim, there was a lot of shuffling around. I got distracted, but then I went back to my seat for some reason, and there it was."

"Where, exactly?"

"Between my tea cup and the side of the table… Why is this important?"

"And where was Kyoya seated relative to you?"

She hesitated. "I guess if I were sitting at twelve o'clock, he was at three o'clock."

It was Kaoru's turn to look down. He stared at the piece of paper, turning it over and over in his hands, and wondered. It made sense that he would simply leave it for her - whether or not the gesture MEANT something, Kyoya could easily have felt that putting it in her hand would be overstepping his bounds. And maybe the rose had been just there to weigh the piece of paper down. But then again, he could have just as easily tucked the business card between her cup and saucer. To use something as personal as a corsage to such a mundane end almost defeated the purpose of the silence, and of the note's noncommittal praise. It was subtle, certainly, but it a also seemed like the sender did not want to chance the subtlety being wasted.

It was still all very strange of course, but stranger things had been known to happen. And it might have been true that Gaby was sad and yearning for something to believe in. But while he and Hikaru had insisted that the host club was the Diet Coke of dating for most guests, who was to say that the things that went on there were not real? After all, had the host club not changed the lives of everyone who was in it? And had they not helped many of the people who wandered in - many not even knowing where they were - in very real ways? And wasn't every host's "persona" simply a stylized version of who they truly were? He HAD told Manny that hosts did not get involved with guests. But even as he said it, he had caught himself thinking that just because something never happened did not mean it was impossible.

"Gaby, I'm sorry, I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. But can I show you something?" he said.

The Latina looked at him skeptically, but as far as he could judge she showed no signs of wanting to shut him down. Taking that for as good a sign as he was going to get, he put the card and corsage between them, twisted around to face the gazebo, and called his brother's name.

Hikaru appeared almost immediately, his face beaming as it usually did when he was being disciplined, but whatever prank he had played was still fresh in his mind, and made it impossible to keep a straight face. The writing of the incident report was apparently going well.

"Hikaru, we need to have a toast," said Kaoru, giving his brother a significant look. "I'm out of tricks to keep our guest entertained. We've had a long and successful career, but I think the time has come to take our last bow."

You can't be serious - I thought you hadn't wanted to, said his brother with his eyes. But when a few seconds passed and Kaoru had not beat a retreat, Hikaru's smile turned more blissful than that of a child on Christmas morning. He couldn't be sure what Kaoru had cooked up, and he could not begin to guess what had transpired, but he had been acquainted with Kaoru long enough to know that he never did anything for amusement alone.

Kaoru got up and came to meet him, and Hikaru took his brother's hand and raised it. Right on cue, as if they had practiced, they both bowed deeply in Gaby's direction. As they straightened, they let about half a minute pass as they waved and blew kisses to an imaginary audience. And then Hikaru took Kaoru by the waist, guided his hips firmly to his, and kissed him - slowly and deliberately on the lips.

Yes, let the world see, Hikaru thought.

Lips slid against lips, tongues took no prisoners, and Hikaru's hands roamed down Kaoru's back as he gave free reign to his face and throat, letting it show just how much he enjoyed the softness of his lover's mouth.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Let them see. Even if "them" was a crowd of just one.

Kaoru slowed the kiss with a hand against his brother's chest, and their lips parted as Kaoru pulled slowly away.

"I love you, Hikaru," he said. "I always have and I always will."

"I love you too, Kaoru," Hikaru answered. "I'll never be happy with anyone else as long as you exist."

They no longer spoke in the airy, floating-world voices of the host club stage, the incestuous duo locked in a tower away from the world. Their voices were their own, and when they broke their gaze, they looked at the girl on the bench, still standing hand in hand. Hikaru smiled with one side of his mouth and let his eyes slide over to Kaoru, as if still finding it hard to believe what had happened.

"Gabs," said the younger twin. "I was going to tell you that if you were worried about distance, you really ought to try proximity. But that would've made this a pity-off, and that's not the point. The point is, at the root there's nothing fake about the boys in the host club."

Gaby's face was immobile, her expression that of one trapped. There was no Manny by her side to pop her jaw in place, and her mouth had been gaping from the moment the twins locked lips.

"We're all Method actors if we're actors at all," Kaoru continued. "Everything we do is BASED on truth. Hikaru and I, for instance, really are in love. But it took us a while to make it work - I mean, to figure out a way to make it work in the real world. It took me being in a really bad place, and it took both of us confronting a lot of demons. We both had to do a lot of growing up. But in the end, I think it's our separate paths that will save us."

Hikaru put a hand on his brother's waist, stroking his lower back as he pulled him closer and stole an encouraging look into his eyes. He was proud of his brother, no question - it seemed that even after all these years Kaoru was still more than capable of surprising him.

"And Manny might kill me five times before I hit the ground for saying this," Kaoru kept on, returning his brother's caress with his eyes, "And if I were in psych class my professors would probably fail me, but maybe being in a place where you are vulnerable is what it takes to see things as they truly are. You might be hurt and lonely, but that does not make you delusional. If you think that something really happened between you and Kyoya today - I mean, I wasn't there, but if that's what you took away from it - then who's to say that you're wrong? Because the host club is not all just an act. And you're not crazy, no matter what anyone says."

"Yeah, it doesn't mean that you two are necessarily going to ride off into the sunset in a shiny red convertible," added Hikaru, having noticed that his brother's words were starting to escape him. "At least not right away. Everyone wants that - and it doesn't exist. But if Kaoru and I can work it out, then so can you." He leaned in between Kaoru's gaze and Gaby's and kissed his brother, slowly and sensuously once again.

Gaby looked at the boys like a hunted animal. No matter how hard she searched her mind, she could not find a single word to say. A part of her wanted to trust those two ridiculous redheaded sprites from across the world. But in truth, she still could not even believe they really existed. And part of her felt angry that it had all worked out for them in the end. If even such freaks could find peace, then what did that make her? Of course, this did not stop her from wanting to grab onto the lifeline they'd thrown her, even if it meant deluding herself yet again. She wanted to believe that their surreal, improbable relationship could mean something - anything at all - when it came to her and HER future. A part of her still wanted a pie - ten pies, all to herself, and to forget. To hurt herself, to make herself feel like a pig unworthy of love, of even a second look. To give herself a reason for her romantic failures - past, present, and future - that was at rational if nothing else.

She closed her eyes and saw Kyoya's face, his glasses blinking in the sunlight like they did that afternoon. But the wind quickly took the apparition away, and the faces of the twins were before her once again.

They did not HAVE to be there. If she were in their shoes, she would have walked away a long time ago just like everyone else had. But when she opened her eyes they were both still standing there as if waiting for her to wake. The stars were around their heads and they still held hands, and only let go when they came to sit on either side of her. And the night was still lovely, dark, and deep.


	16. The Sun, the Sea, and the Twincest

"So you're a real couple now!" Sammie clapped her hands, bouncing in her seat.

It was lunch time, and although Gaby, the sole witness, had taken until well after eleven o'clock to recover from the previous night's events, the word had spread quickly.

"That's wonderful!" Sammie added, "Although I think I speak for all girls everywhere when I say that we're very disappointed it wasn't any of us!"

"I don't know, Sammie," said Kim, stirring her soda to coax out the bubbles and popping them as they rose, "I think if it was any of us we'd always be competing with the brotherly love. Plus, whichever twin we weren't with would be the third wheel, and that would just be sad. I think it's better this way." She smiled serenely.

"And it's not like it's even that much of a shock," added Helen.

"Yeah," echoed Manny. "It's not like we didn't know you were fucking like jackrabbits behind closed doors already. Who wants to interfere with THAT?"

"Manny, just because you jerk off to it at night doesn't make it true," said Kim placidly, popping a stick of gum into her mouth.

"Well, you're not qualified to talk - you don't live next door to them," Manny retorted. "YOU don't have to listen to them going on every night - 'Oh, Hikaru, harder, HARDER'!" She rolled back her eyes and made a show of fanning herself with her hand as she shifted her voice up two octaves, only to erupt in raucous laughter.

Kaoru turned red to the roots of his hair. While it wasn't strictly speaking true that such things went on EVERY night, Manny's impression more than did justice to the night before. In fact, he wondered if she was joking, or if the walls were really that thin.

Hikaru took advantage of the dining room being devoid of clinic staff to rub his new boyfriend's back with a comforting smile, which Kaoru returned.

"Be that as it may, princesses, I'm afraid it IS true," Hikaru said, "At this point the best we can do for you on THAT front is a show with lights and sounds. And maybe a three-way."

"Hikaru!" Kaoru gasped - a sheepish spark in his eyes.

"Oh, I'm just teasing, Kaoru. Though I know there's nothing you wouldn't do for a bottle of Umeshu," Hikaru smirked, running his knuckle down his brother's cheek as the latter turned nearly crimson. "Ladies, let it be known for the record - Kaoru LOVES Umeshu."

"Well, not as much as he loves you, I hope." Gif smiled, raising her head from taking a sip from her tea mug.

"No, not nearly as much, and far more than I deserve." Hikaru's lips melted into a blissful smile as he looked at the man beside him - the man who had the power to make him all feelings from head to toe. "Kaoru's an angel, straight from heaven."

"Which is why you should TREAT HIM WELL," Margo said, molding her face into her best attempt as severity given the circumstances.

Hikaru slid his hand across his brother's waist and pulled him closer, nestling him into the crook of his body. That way, he could better enjoy the heat Kaoru seemed to have been radiating from the moment he awoke. Although he had been too shy to say much as the girls mobbed them in the dining room with more zeal than the day they had arrived, it was hard to miss that Kaoru had been nothing short of glowing. And although it was tacitly assumed at Hazeltown that it was bad form to do so, whenever Hikaru's eyes momentarily slipped down to Kaoru's tray, he could not help but notice that his brother was eating for two and with apparent gusto. At first, it had stirred a small flutter of anxiety within him, but the smiles that Kaoru stole from time to time had been so HAPPY, and his face was more alive than he had seen it in months. He decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and then his eyes fell on Gaby.

"Gabs, you've been quiet." He smiled at her.

And indeed, she had been. He could not quite tell if it was the lack of sleep, or if she was still emotionally exhausted from whatever sparked her fit the night before. For all he knew, she may have still been shell-shocked by what she had seen, considering the fact that she had never been the twins' biggest fan. Still, whether by force of habit while in host-mode or by dint of their confidence last night, he decided to try to bring her out of her shell.

"Well, it's weird," said Gaby, "I feel like I should be put off my the idea of you two, but I'm not." She stirred her tea and fixed her eyes pointedly on the cup, apparently enthralled by the process. "So I thought about it, and I concluded that people are repelled by incest because if there's a man and woman, there's the possibility of children, and that never leads to anything good genetics-wise. But you and Kaoru can't have children. It's odd, but it's almost like one taboo undoes the other."

"That's an interesting way of looking at it." Hikaru could not hide the fact that Gaby's statement was a relief - she had, after all, been born a Catholic.

"But not everyone might be so tolerant," she added, "Isn't Japan pretty conservative, after all? How would you make it work in the real world, as you said?"

"Interestingly enough, incest in Japan is legal. So are same-sex relationships, though you can't get married."

"No, but I mean, how is it perceived?"

"Not too badly, actually - you'd be surprised. There still aren't a lot of people who choose to be openly gay, but there's a long history of cross-dressing and, uh, fluid sexual preferences as part of the culture. Family values are alive and well of course, but privacy is also pretty much sacred. Public life and private life are very separate spheres."

"But you guys aren't just anyone, aren't you public figures and heirs to an important company? Wouldn't you still be expected to marry and have, uh, progeny? I hear that's pretty important in Asia, and in Hong Kong there's even a fake marriage market for people who need to keep up appearances…"

"Oh, there are ways around that." Hikaru launched into the explanation he had been preparing with almost too much enthusiasm. "For one thing, Kaoru won't be a public figure - he wants to go into healthcare. That may even necessitate changing his name - I mean, would you want YOUR doctor to be named something like Kardashian?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind a LAWYER named Kardashian," Tara said with a laugh. "He did get OJ off - but yeah, I get what you're saying."

"Yeah, for a doctor it's better to be more self-effacing. We'll have very different jobs, so nobody outside our closest friend group is going to be comparing notes. We can fudge marriage records and wear wedding rings to keep away husband-hunters - and I could tell everyone at work how my wife's a private person with a demanding job, which won't be a lie. We could even get married abroad - that's allowed now."

"Oh, that'll be so romantic!" sighed Gif, beaming, as she cupped her face with her hands. "An elopoment, and a secret world to come home to, for just the two of you!"

"But what about children and such?" Gaby insisted. She had come to look more alive, and seemed to be enjoying pelting Hikaru with questions. To his credit, he was holding up well to the interrogation.

"We can adopt - and we've got a little brother or sister on the way. They can be our heir."

"But what if they let slip at school that they have two daddies?"

"Children can be taught to call one mommy and the other – Kaoru?"

Kaoru had gotten up, barely excusing himself, and was walking away briskly before his brother had finished exclaiming his name. Hikaru felt his soul disappear into his toes.

"I'm sorry, ladies, I'll be right back." He got up and rushed off after his brother as quickly as his feet would carry him.

"See, this is what I was talking about yesterday, Margo," said Gaby, a little testily. "They've got money and power. They could change things. But even they feel like they have to pretend to toe the line. If anyone could pull the damn trigger, it's them - and they won't do it!" She sniffed at her tea, a little ruefully, and ripped open a packet of Splenda. She had been playing Devil's advocate, and Hikaru and Kaoru had evidently not passed her test.

"Patience, my friend," said Margo, rotating her wrist in the sunlight from the frosted window. By now, her arm had completely healed, and she seemed hard-pressed to stop marveling as she re-discovered what it was capable of. "They're only sixteen. They might be capable of much more than they know."

…

The night before, the fact that Hikaru had a plan had caused Kaoru to see his brother with new eyes, but hearing their intentions fleshed out before a large audience had turned out to be more than he could handle. As Hikaru explained things to Gaby, Kaoru's eyes had been shooting from girl to girl - surreptitiously, he hoped - to try to assess the "public's" reaction. And for the most part, to their credit, most faces expressed only marvel and bliss. But Hikaru had only to allude to honne and tatemae**, and suddenly all was lost. Quite unexpectedly, Kaoru's put-upon mind had begun to draw pictures of the girls inwardly laughing at them, of writing their relationship off as either a phase or a play for attention, and their scheme as something that would never work. And at the end of the day, even if the girls really did support them, how much of that support was simply because they liked to fantasize about a pair of good-looking twins with incestuous tendencies? Others whose help they might need to enlist going forward might not be so sympathetic. Yes, Hikaru could be very persuasive, but in the light of day things suddenly looked a good deal more daunting.

(**public vs. private dichotomy)

That morning, unlike so many times previously, he had been eating with a joy he had sorely missed, and without a single thought of losing his lunch eventually. But before long he felt the familiar yen at his throat again, and this time the anxiety short-circuited past all thoughts of wanting to forget, and of frustration with himself for not being more "normal." This time, all he wanted to do was vomit - the feeling simply came, on its own accord. It was all he could do to dig his fingers into the sides of the chair and bodily force himself to stay seated. He tried to regulate his breath in hopes that it would stop the queasiness rising in his stomach. But in time he could not even do that.

And so he found himself standing in the doorway to his and Hikaru's bathroom, unsure how he had gotten there. He stared at the toilet bowl, and felt like his body was being pulled apart in different directions while his stomach churned. He had somehow - somehow - managed to come to just before he had crossed the four-or-so feet of tiles between the threshold and the bowl, and he felt waves of uncontrolled electricity shooting up and down his skin as he contracted his throat to keep down the food. He grabbed hold of the wood paneling of the door and struggled to keep upright.

You moron, you piece of scum - he heard a remote part of his mind chiding - aren't you a rational being? Don't you have a brain between your ears? Don't go back to doing this again - don't degrade yourself…

Yes, yes - another part of his mind screamed - Just do it already. Because you don't want to get better. Because you're a freak, a creep, a piece of human refuse with a stiff one-eye for your own brother, and you don't deserve to feel good about anything - not even the food you ate. You don't even deserve to live, you don't deserve to be among sane, normal people, and even your brother will get tired of your crap sooner or later-

"Kaoru!" he heard his twin's voice, nearly hysterical.

Before he knew what was happening, his brother had seized him by the shoulders and pulled him away from the door, spinning him bodily around so their eyes met.

"Kaoru, what do you think you're-" He shook the younger twin by the shoulders almost in spite of himself. "Were you going to-? Why?! What happened?!"

The older twin's look was still frazzled, but as he stared back at him, Kaoru began to see the wheels in his brother's head start to turn almost too quickly, and then a look of horror flushed over Hikaru's face. He squeezed Kaoru's hands, which had grown cold, and Kaoru was grateful for it - the pressure helped stay the rampant waves of electricity - a calming effect that seemed to extend to his stomach.

"Is that why you-" Hikaru whispered brokenly, "Is it because you're… worried? About US? About the future? About what people might say?"

Kaoru nodded.

"Kaoru…" The older twin sighed, and let his brother's form melt against his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around him. The two were quiet for a moment, and Hikaru suppressed a sob that nearly racked his chest as he wondered how much grief might have been saved if he had been less obtuse and put two and two together sooner. And yet, he felt no less desperate. After all, even if he had let his pants get the better of his judgment in the past months and years, it felt like he had done all he could to make up for it - or as much as he could do, given where he was in life at the time…"

"Kaoru," he finally said, gathering himself, "I don't know how else to try and convince you, but you're the fucking love of my life. And you have nothing to worry about as long as I have anything to say about it."

"See, I really wish you didn't say that," Kaoru replied. The electricity coursing through his body had slowed, and he no longer felt like vomiting, so he breathed a tentative sigh. He felt weak all the same, but he pulled himself slowly away from his brother's chest. "I mean, I wish you'd stop saying that I have nothing to worry about. Because whether or not something's worth worrying about is… subjective. It's something everyone has a right to decide for themselves."

Kaoru looked at his brother and waited for a glimmer of comprehension in his eyes. A sign - anything - that his brother understood that he, Hikaru, could not wave a magic wand and make all his, Kaoru's, problems go away, and that "failing" his brother in that way was almost as painful as the ordeal itself.

The glimmer came quicker than he expected it.

"Of course…" Hikaru suddenly looked like he did the night he'd thought he'd half-crushed his brother. He mouthed words ineffectually for a few moments, and lowered Kaoru's hands, still in his, which he had been holding between their chests. "I'm… really, really sorry, Kaoru. I didn't realize… I didn't meant to… invalidate you feelings."

"That's okay." Kaoru smiled a bit, emboldened. "But you have to realize that this isn't something that's going to go away over night." He nodded in the direction of the bathroom, its door still open. "It's not as bad as it used to be, but this might be something I'll have to keep… managing for a long time. And if you're not okay with that, then maybe that's something we should figure out up front."

"Kaoru." Hikaru brought his brother's hands to his lips again, a note of despair in his voice. "You know anything's okay with me when it comes to you. I just wish there was something I could do. I wish I could carry your pain for you." He let go of Kaoru's hands and wrapped his arms around him again, squeezing his upper body tightly, for lack of any better idea of how to shield him from his troubles.

"You know, as much as I love that about you, Hikaru," Kaoru said, letting his head rest against his brother's shoulder - "How you always want to come in have a big intervention and fix things… But sooner or later you're going to have to realize that you can't always do that. That pain is mine, and nobody else's."

"It doesn't have to be, you know." Hikaru kissed the side of his head. "You can give me half."

"Half? How?"

"Well, my - uh, therapist says that one way to deal with harmful patterns is to take them and replace them with new ones. I used to think he was kind of an idiot, because that doesn't really fix the root of the problem, but maybe he's right. Maybe if every time you wanted to, uh…" - He gestured with his eyes at the toilet - "You could just find me and kiss me instead?"

"I… guess I could try that," said Kaoru, the corners of his mouth sliding skyward as he looked up, determined though he was to keep the conversation serious. "But that might mean I'll be kissing you a lot."

"Oh, right, because that's going to be SO inconvenient, Kaoru." Hikaru brushed a stray strand of hair from his brother's forehead, ushering it back to its fellows among his bangs. "Come on. Let's give big brother a kiss, shall we?"

Their fingers intertwined on Hikaru's chest and their lips just about met, when they heard a burst of ebullient laughter.

"Oh, get a room, you two!"

Hikaru turned to the door to find Manny, accompanied by Tara snapping a photo with an invisible camera and Gif and Shar's elfin faces grinning from around the doorframe.

"That's funny," he said, casting a look of mock surprise over all four of them. "This IS our room. Maybe you're the ones who need a room of your own, as per Virginia Woolf."

…

When the twins first negotiated the laxer visiting restrictions for the host club, it had been agreed that if the dry run in the hotel would go off without a hitch, the next day the hosts would come along on a South Wing beach outing. The twins had an inkling that Sarah had only agreed to the scheme because she had next to no faith that the first encounter would not end in disaster. But given that it didn't, they came to collect the very next day, and soon all the girls were laying out their swim-clothes and singing Hikaru and Kaoru's praises. Of course, given the nature of the place, swim suits as such were not allowed, but for the benefit of anyone who did in fact want to use the beach and did not want to wear scrubs or street-clothes, Hazeltown supplied swim costumes that looked like something sout of the 1920's. Though made out of the same materials as a modern bathing suit, they looked more like dresses, and were all oversized, the better to hide the wearer's form. In particular, they all reached below the knee, covered the upper arms, and had a wealth of ruffles around the middle to obscure any evidence of traditional female endowments.

Despite the disappointing prospects in clothing, after lunch the South Wing was abuzz with all the excitement of the dressing room of a vaudeville theatre. Only Gaby appeared jittery in a bad way, walking around aimlessly and avoiding eye contact with anyone as she turned something over and over in her pocket.

As the girls wrapped up their preparations, Hikaru and Kaoru made their way to the foyer of the guest bed and breakfast ahead of schedule, where the Host Club received the news of their official coming out as a couple with almost as much joy as their Hazeltown friends did.

"Please accept my sincerest congratulations," said Kyoya as he shook both their hands, his address as polished as ever, "Although I don't recommend that you change your act for the Host Club. My research shows that sexual tension sells better than domestic bliss."

The twins promised they wouldn't.

Honey blinked his eyes, looked from Hikaru to Kaoru and then at Usa-chan, and said, "Wait, so you weren't a couple before?"

"No, Honey, we were," said Hikaru, smiling and stealing a look at his brother.

"We were just a bit embattled," added Kaoru.

"Oh, I see," said Honey. "Well, Usa-chan knew it all along." He beamed. "Usa-chan is never wrong."

Mori clapped his hands on both their shoulders, the strength of the blow evidently proportional to his happiness, and uttered something that sounded oddly like the word "Groovy."

And then Tamaki bounded onto the scene with a whoop - having by all accounts decided that it was his turn to nearly knock the twins over.

"What'd I miss?! What'd I miss?! What'd I miss?!" he shouted.

"Hikaru and Kaoru are getting married," said Mori. "To each other."

It took a moment for Tamaki to process the information, but his reaction was well worth the wait.

"Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness," he exploded, his voice bearing all evidence of being hyped up on coffee that was definitely not instant. "My beloved sons! Getting married! To each other!" He ruffled both their hair until their efforts that morning in parting and gelling their bangs just-so were summarily undone. "Which one of you is the bride?! Is it Kaoru?! Oh my goodness, what am I thinking, of course it's Kaoru! Kaoru, the blushing bride!" He pinched the younger twin's cheeks until the blush she was referring to emerged to his satisfaction. "Can I give you away? Please, please, please, say I can give you away!"

"Boss, I appreciate your enthusiasm," Kaoru said, a bit miffed, the moment Tamaki paused his stream of word-vomit long enough to get a word in edgewise. "But I can give myself away perfectly fine."

"And failing that, we DO have an actual father," added Hikaru. "As in, the one who raised us?"

But Tamaki refused to simmer down for a long time, and it took the arrival of the girls and Manny loudly clearing her throat to make him slip into the more socially acceptable role of the club's Casanova.

Both twins breathed a sigh. It seemed that thus far, everything was going over perfectly - though, to be fair, the Host Club was never a set of people they felt they had to worry about too much. And then the festivities began, overseen by several clinic staff as chaperones. The party made its way to the beach, talking and laughing, and before long a stretch of serene coastline opened before them, the sun high in the sky. The noisy hubbub of conversation ceased for a few moments as hosts and guests alike drank in the emerald clarity of the waters, the cloudless sky to match, and the pristine white sand with palm trees that fought to edge up to the water as close as they could. Helen collapsed to her knees and seemed to be fighting back sobs, Manny's jaw dropped farther than Gaby's, Honey threw Usa-chan in the air, and Sammie squeezed Kim's arm and suppressed a squeal.

And then, nearly as suddenly as the silence, there came a general hullabaloo of extracting beach towels and blankets, staking out spots by the water, and bartering over who would sit with whom and who would be on whose team for volleyball. Kyoya did his best to oversee the proceedings, trusty clipboard in hand, but his efforts were met with partial success at best.

…

Formal entertaining done for the day, the twins were sharing a quiet few minutes on a beach towel of their own, the sun setting between their heads. A riotous game of beach volleyball was still going on not far away, and for a moment everyone seemed to have forgotten about Hikaru and Kaoru as the heroes of the day. Hikaru leaned toward his brother, and turned his head to block the sun coming into his eyes.

"Kaoru, you know I love you, right?" he said. "You restore my faith in humanity every day, three times before breakfast."

"Hikaru, you know how I feel about too much flattery," Kaoru answered.

"No flattery at all - that's the truth."

The last thing Kaoru saw was Hikaru with his lips slightly open leaning in toward him, his eyes a soft velvet that whispered that there was no place on earth where he would rather be. Their hands came together on their own accord, and Kaoru suddenly felt strong and safe. He closed his eyes, the imprint of the sun forming a shadow on his eyelids. He felt Hikaru's breath against his lips and could almost feel them - that unique, magical blend of soft and muscular - when they heard Manny's voice cut into the air above them.

"I hate to interrupt your little romantic moment, but Gaby and Kyoya are ALONE. TOGETHER."

"Fuck it, Manny, do you ENJOY busting in on us?" Hikaru snapped.

"YES, I'm still getting used to being single, so I need an outlet," she scoffed. "No, really, though. I need reinforcements. You're Kyoya's friends, so you need to come - without you I'm just the crazy mother hen."

"Manny," said Hikaru, making a show of straightening the compression underwear he was wearing under his swim trunks, "May I ask why you care so damn much? Is Gaby your responsiblity? She'll never learn if she doesn't make her own mistakes, and if she goes nuts, can't we all just tune her out? Would it really be that hard?"

Kaoru put a hand on his shoulder. "Hikaru, we are ALL each other's responsibility. To be honest, I have NO idea what could possibly be going on in Kyoya's mind right now, and Gaby really IS very fragile. Would you really be able to live with yourself if you knew you could intervene, and yet you did nothing? Manny," he turned to the Yankee. "Can you give us a second?"

He put his arm around Hikaru and lowered his voice. "We'll be there for damage control, alright? I'm honestly afraid she could take even Honey right now if she wanted."

Hikaru smiled at his brother. There he goes again, making me think "Is he even real?", for the fiftieth time this hour. He let out an exasperated sigh for Manny's benefit and got to his feet, clapping a hand on the Yankee's shoulder as he offered the other to Kaoru to help him up.

"Alright," he said, with an air of solemnity, "Let's go get our girl."

…

"YOU! Otori! If you hurt my friend, I'll mess you up so hard your ANCESTORS will get dizzy!" yelled Manny in Japanese before she was even five steps away from the duo on the beach towel - making heavy use of otokorashii** constructions and with an obvious air of having practiced. Hikaru and Kaoru followed close behind, both holding a hand in front of her to stop her from bodily throwing herself onto Kyoya before he had time to know what was what.

(**Japanese "blunt-speak," or words used predominantly by men to make speech sound rougher)

Gaby and Kyoya looked up at her with more bemusement than fear, and Kyoya straightened his glasses.

"Hurt your friend?" he asked in English, in an attempt to redirect the conversation into a language that all present, including the supposed damsel in distress, could understand. He glanced at the girl beside him, as if trying to appraise whether she was any worse for wear from sitting a good two feet away from him.

"Uh, Kyoya, while I don't approve of the Yankee's methods, I do support the general sentiment," Hikaru began, following his friend's cue in choice of language.

"Yeah," Kaoru chimed in, flashing an apologetic look at the girl on the beach towel as he switched to Japanese, "Manny's friend has a bit of a… history, if you know what I mean. She might take things the wrong way, and she's still got a long way to go before she's better."

Kyoya got up and looked from Manny to the twins and then back, a faint smile playing on his lips.

"It's Manchester, isn't it?" he said in English, and bowed his head. She nodded, and almost took an angry step towards him, but the twins grabbed her wrists and pulled her back, digging their heels into the sand preemptively. "It's wonderful that you care about Gaby's well-being," Kyoya continued, "But what exactly do you think is happening here?"

Manny's determination had been not been undercut by Kyoya's calm demeanor, and for the first few seconds - as the twins spoke - she had looked ready to spit a violent retort in his face - possibly mixed with saliva - the moment he said something. But when he did, his words quickly left her at a loss. Her eyes desperately scanned the horizon, the palm trees, and Kyoya's feet for an answer, but she did not have enough Japanese to say what she was thinking, and she did not want to use English for fear of involving Gaby - whom she had deemed too fragile to know her own mind.

The silence hung for what felt like a minute, smothering even the sounds of the waves and the volleyball game in the distance. And then Gaby got up to take a step between them, apparently recovered from the blend of indignation and discomfort that had been written on her face until a moment ago.

"Manny -" She looked into her friend's seething face as if hoping for a shadow of recognition in the eyes of one possessed, "I'm really happy you care so much about me, but do you think you could maybe let me sort things out for myself?"

The Yankee looked at Gaby, and it took a few moments - but her eyes softened. The twins felt the pull of her wrists slacken against their hands.

"It's for your own good, Gabs," she said in a low voice. "You're four years younger than me, and you're already five times as jaded."

"I know," Gaby said. "But I can handle it."

A quiver stole across Manny's bottom lip, and she looked back at the twins and nodded. They let go of her hands as she came towards her friend, hugging her somewhat stiffly, clapping her on the back, and burying her face in the side of her head. In another context, the situation might have been comical, as Manny was at least a foot taller. They hugged for a few moments, and the twins thought they heard Manny whisper something, and then she let go and stepped back, her arms uncomfortably at her sides.

"Fuck it," she said. "I'm going swimming."

She took off the T shirt she was wearing to reveal what was apparently an illegally procured bikini and walked away - and none of them stopped her. In fact, all three boys found themselves wondering just how irrational some eating disorders were. After all, for all her bearing of a musketeer, Manny had very much the woman's body, was tall and athletic, and looked like she wore a size six at most in dresses.

"I guess our work here is done." Kaoru smiled, breaking eye contact with Manny's back.

"Our work?" said Hikaru, "But we didn't do anything!"

"Okay, fair enough, maybe not." Kaoru chuckled. "I guess sometimes we're doomed to be the homosexual supporting cast after all."

"Oh, I think you did more than you know," said Kyoya with his usual genteel smile as he settled cross-legged on the towel again. "Sometimes presence makes all the difference."

He glanced at his companion, who was looking at her hands and blushing for the first time Hikaru and Kaoru had seen her do so. She looked up at him, as if sensing his eyes, and smiled hesitantly.

"In fact," said Kyoya, straightening the edges of the towel, "Feel free to join us. Just make sure to take off your shoes."

He gestured at a spot just off to the side, where his sandals stood next to a much smaller pair.


	17. Not Just Any Designer

It was shortly after lunch, and almost everyone had dispersed to appointments, but Hikaru had a bit of free time. As a consequence, he was making the rounds of the South Wing, saying goodbye to walls before he mustered up the courage to say goodbye to people. He and Kaoru had been declared to be well on the mend, if prone to difficulty in observing the "no touching" rule, and preparations were underway for both to leave Hazeltown in a week. Though he had resented the boring, whitewashed indifference of them place at first, the older twin found it almost bittersweet that he would never wake up to see it again, after it had born witness to so many things he would not soon forget. For one thing, this was the place where he and Kaoru - though they had been everything to each other since the day they were born - had fallen in love in the adult sense. And if it was this hard to imagine leaving the building, then saying goodbye to the girls whose lives he and his brother had ended up changing in small yet undeniable ways, only to have them do the same for them - no, that was still unthinkable. It did not matter than he had never had an eating disorder like the rest of them. They had become such fast friends that only the Host Club could compare.

He came into the dining room, and saw that one of the windows had been replaced. The new panes were not frosted, and the early August sun slanted through the glass, sending sunbursts all over the room. The splashes of sun played on the hair of the girl seated with her back to the windows, and on the papers spread before her on the table.

"Hello, Shar," Hikaru said, nodding his head. He spoke in English, for although Shar knew Japanese at a decent level, English had become the default and the habit. "Oh no, don't-" She had started as soon she saw his shadow fall across the floor, and began stuffing her sheets into a tired-orange folder. "Don't stop on my account, I'm just-"

The girl did not look up as she swatted at the papers that lay farther away from her, but it had the unintended effect of causing them to fly away from her grasp. One fell off the table. Hikaru bent down to pick it up, and saw that it was a drawing of a dress from various angles - both on a model and laying flat, with dimensions and details of various kinds scribbled in the margins. The design was a relatively simple button-down, with a skirt that flared a just below the knee. It also had a thin belt, and modest bell-sleeves that cinched halfway down the upper arm. The fabric was an Escher-esque pattern of brown and white frogs that could have been mistaken for autumn leaves if one didn't look closely enough. The frogs made Hikaru smile, and he thought that if his heart was not busy already, he would certainly try to meet the girl walking down the street in such a dress.

Shar froze for a few moments, her hand outstretched, and it took her a a while to find her voice.

"Give that back…" she whispered when she did, her face an expressionless Noh-mask reminiscent of Mrs. Honda's a long time ago. "Please."

"This is… very nice, Shar." Hikaru still stared at the mock-up, teasing his mind with an image of Kaoru, his hair short as always, the dress draped over his androgynous figure. The apparition wore Roman-style sandals that provided a little bit of lift as he leaned against a parapet by the sea somewhere off Yokohama. But then again even Gaby, whose tiny form showed off every ounce of fluff, would have looked just as refreshing in that dress - and so would Manny, her curves so feminine they were on the verge of being as obscene as a Prince song. Even Sammie's oversized chest might not look vulgar if the top were tailored well. And the skirt would have made both Kim's Doric columns and Shar's pigeon-toed Steinways worth following to the ends of the world.

"Very nice…" The mouth of the Noh mask turned downward in a bitter expression, and Hikaru could see her fighting to keep that the only feeling she allowed herself to reveal. "Yeah, everyone says that."

Kaoru put the sheet of paper on the table and slid it back to her.

"No, I really like it," he said. "If I were a girl, I'd definitely wear it. And if I had a girlfriend, I'd definitely want to see her in it. Heck, I'd like to see KAORU in it."

"Don't say that," Shar said dully, "It's terrible. And it doesn't make any difference anyway." Her fingers were molded over the corners of her folder, and she let the sheet of paper lie between them as if she'd changed her mind and grown repulsed.

"Why not?"

"Because it doesn't. I don't have what it takes, and even if I did, it's a crapshoot."

"What's a crapshoot?" Hikaru asked. He was still standing and she was seated, and he caught himself realizing that despite weeks of living in close quarters and seeing each other day in and day out, he still knew next to nothing about her. He did not know what she liked - besides hoarding and keeping meticulous tabs on food - what she believed, or what she aspired to in life. Of course, she never volunteered much information, but he could not help wondering if it was his fault for not taking enough of an interest.

"The fashion industry," she answered.

"What does it take? And have you tried?" Almost as soon as he had said it, Hikaru realized the question was embarrassingly naive, especially for one who stood to inherit a company that held a substantial share of the market in the industry in question. And it wasn't, strictly speaking, that he did not know in theory - he simply had never met someone who saw things from the other side of the table.

"I did try, but girls like me are a dime a dozen."

"I find that hard to believe."

He heard a step behind him, and turned around to find that Kaoru had joined them, his complexion a healthy peaches and cream in the unadulterated light from the new window.

"Ah, the redhead of my dreams." Hikaru stretched out his arm, wordlessly inviting his brother to come mold himself against his body and kissed him on both cheeks when he did - out of consideration for the girl present. "Shar wants to go into fashion, but she says girls like her are a dime a dozen, Kaoru. Tell her it's not true."

"But it is." They heard Shar's voice below them, sullen. "Every girl who weighs under 50 kilo and whose grandma tells her she's pretty will grow up wanting to be a model. And every girl who can tell amethyst from periwinkle dreams of being a fashion designer."

"But not everyone tries," said Kaoru, as if having read his brother's thoughts, uttered only a few moments before he had come. His eyes fell on the sheet of paper still on the table, whose presence Shar was still avoiding, and smiled. "Have you tried?"

Shar looked up at the boys, and they slowly pulled out chairs to sit, side by side, on her left. Hikaru still had his hand on his brother's back and looked like he could not guess what he had done to deserve such happiness. At the same time, Kaoru looked back with eyes full of unconditional love and trust. Although Shar knew it could have been worse, and she might had been stuck on a broken train with them kissing and petting on a bench across the way, she still felt sorry for herself. They were happy. They had what they wanted. They would never relate. And yet when the brothers broke eye contact and looked at her, she could see that their eyes were kind, and that they truly wanted to know. Especially the twin on the right, the one who sat closer to her - his face looked like coming home might have felt like after you'd forgotten what home was. I may not be able to lessen your pain - he seemed to say - I may not even understand. But I promise one thing - I'll hear you, and I'll carry your words with me. You don't have to be alone.

It was at once a frightening thought, like being violated, and soothed like a lullaby.

"I tried to be a model," she said, hesitantly reaching for the sheet paper with the sketch. "I tried that first because you don't need a ton of special training, and it's an 'in.' But all it did was land me here. No matter how much you weigh, it's always two kilos more that you have to lose. I left," - she winced - "and now I can't even get myself to stop. I keep thinking, if nothing else, at least people on the street will see me and think, 'maybe she's in fashion'."

Hikaru found himself chewing on the insides of his cheeks and marveling at just how much of a difference his brother's presence had made. Kaoru had gotten more out of Shar with the very same question and a single look than he, Hikaru, had in five minutes. It seemed his brother was made to work with troubled souls after all. Of course, that still left the matter of Shar's problem. He could perhaps envision himself asking his mother to pull a few strings and hoping that it worked, but would it even be good for her, all things considered?

"Seems like modeling can be a pretty thankless business," Kaoru beat his brother to the punch, his voice gentle. "But what about designing?" He let his eyes flash to the piece of paper again. The mock-up still lay between them, Shar's hand covering part of it, but she seemed to have quite forgotten about it as she watched for the twins' reactions to her story. Still, Kaoru managed to get a decent impression of the design's details, and from what he could see it was sort of thing that would make a girl very happy.

"Yeah, you can still be in fashion," Hikaru added, "You won't need to keep losing weight" - at least not as much, he thought, realizing he rarely saw anyone with a BMI over 20 in his mother's circles - "You won't be forced to retire at 21. And I still think you're very very good, from what I've seen."

"No, that won't work."

"What makes you say that?" Hikaru asked, his expression as artless as they came. Shar caught herself thinking that it took a very special person to ask questions in exactly that way, as if with no other end than knowing itself. It made it hard to refuse an answer.

"Well…"

Shar looked at the twins' eyes for a trace of pity - a sentiment worse than the blackest derision, as far as she was concerned - and paused.

She wanted to, but how could she tell them?

How could she tell anyone here? That it wasn't even about talent, or beauty, or thinness - it was about TIME. Her family was not rich or powerful like almost everyone else's at Hazeltown. Her grandmother had owned a restaurant supply chain that had gone bankrupt, and she was only in Hawaii because her aunt, a successful lawyer, had agreed to help her family. Though even she had not exactly for nothing in return. In addition, Shar had been forced to leave design school in favor of a more "useful" faculty, and worked nights as a waitress to ease the burden on her parents. How could she tell the twins that the modest stack of papers before her - along with the modeling proofs under her mattress that she never looked at anymore - that those were her one true life, but to say that they had taken her whole life to produce, mostly in short bursts of time stolen from sleep, would have been hardly an exaggeration. The folder contained everything from designs she had doodled in the corners of school notebooks to projects she had tweaked lovingly for months. But there was still so… little, and it was all still so poor. And at the end of the day, success in such things came to those who did not have to work for a wage to make ends meet, and had the time to perfect their craft and wear out pair after pair of shoes beating about the thresholds of agencies. No, those who ended up anywhere in that business, whether as beauty or as brains, had either a safety net or infinite courage, neither of which she did. And now the pursuit of her dreams had set her back - had saddled her with issues that would keep her back, perhaps forever. Worse yet, it landed her family in debt to the woman who never did anything for free. Ironically, the guilt made Shar want to stop eating and fade away all the more. No, she would never try to be a real designer again. She had already messed things up too badly, and she hated herself - not the least for lacking even the courage to let herself starve. She always grew afraid at the very last moment.

"It's so hard to get noticed," she finally said. "I can't even get anyone to look my work. I don't even know if it's any good."

"Well, our mom is a designer," said Kaoru. "Maybe she can take a look at it for you."

"Everyone's a designer these days." Shar rolled her eyes. Or, by all accounts, it seemed every wealthy woman who could hold a glue gun was, if one believed reality shows.

"She's not just any designer," Hikaru said. "She's Yuzuha Hitachiin."

Shar had been about to retort - but her words got stuck in her throat like Napoleon in the snows of Russia.

Of course, the circumstance in itself was not hugely surprising. What shocked her was how he said it - indeed, that he had said it at all. Given that many Hazeltown patients came from high-profile families, it was generally understood that last names were to be kept quiet in day-to-day interactions. Even name bracelets bore only the last initial, and most of the time things did not go much farther than mentioning what one's family did, or where one was from. Sharing full names was the mark of highest confidence, and yet he had simply… said it - without shame, without pretense, without so much as lowering his voice.

"THE…. Yuzuha Hitachiin?" she stammered.

"The very same," Hikaru nodded emphatically. "And… listen," he continued - his thoughts racing ahead faster than his lips had time to form the words, "Maybe she can help you. I mean, I wouldn't get your hopes up, but if she likes you, maybe you can come work for her. Of course, she'll probably be a scarier boss than Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada, but if you can last a year she'll give you a recommendation that'll get you in ANYWHERE…"

"But… why would she help me?" Shar asked slowly, still dazed and afraid to believe that the twins were not pulling her leg. "Why would she even want to meet me? She probably gets aspiring fashion designers mobbing her day and night as it is."

It was, of course, a good question. But Hikaru refused to appear daunted.

"Because we're her sons," he said brightly.

"And because we like you," said Kaoru with a soft smile, leaning closer as he pulled the piece of paper gently in his direction. "Both you and your dress. Those are frogs, right? Heck, I'D wear that."

"Plus, we need SOMETHING to talk about when she comes to see us tomorrow. And for the record, Kaoru, I'd pay to see that."

"Well, then I guess that's another reason we need to get this dress off this sheet and on the runway, isn't it?" The younger twin smiled coquettishly at his brother.

…

Yuzuha flipped through the pages of Shar's portfolio as she took a long draw of her orange juice. The twins, their mother, and Shar were sitting on the four-seasons porch of the guest hotel at Hazeltown. The twins had an orange mocha frappucino with two straws between them, and Shar nursed a small glass of coconut water. It was high noon, and the sunlight streamed through the open windows in showers, along with the voices of birds. Yuzuha was looking much happier than the last time the twins had seen her, and only the fact that her cheekbones had melted into her face betrayed her condition. She also seemed to have developed a confirmed liking for loose pants and blazer sets, stopped wearing heels of dizzying heights, and the Hermes scarf was missing to reveal red hair shorter than the twins', impeccably arranged.

"You know, I'm not one for nepotism, and I generally don't trust Hikaru farther than I can throw him, but-" The twins and Shar had been waiting breathlessly for her to purse her lips - a universally recognized sign that spelled apocalypse to all who knew her. But she did not. Instead, she shut the portfolio cover with a snap and removed her sunglasses.

"How long did it take you to come up with this?"

Shar hesitated. Ten years? More? Was it a trick question? To admit that it had taken her nearly her life if measured in thought and inspiration was not something she was ready to admit. And quite aside from even that, her soul was still swimming somewhere in her stomach as she watched the woman she could still scarcely believe was the legendary Yuzuha - more delicate-looking than her reputation, impeccably dressed, and fox-faced like the twins - handling her work and… probably laughing derisively inside for all she was worth. If not for the business card Shar clutched in her hand so hard it turned soggy, she still would not have believed it. And if she were not star-struck and marveling at the fact that Yuzuha drank ORANGE JUICE like other humans, she might have been mortified.

"I've been working on that on and off for a few years," she said. A few - nice and noncommittal, she decided. And even she was surprised by the conviction that came through in her voice, for in reality she felt nothing if not faint.

"Do you have any formal training?" Yuzuha opened the folder again, and looked at the design on top - the one with the frogs. Neither her face nor voice betrayed annoyance or weariness with the proceedings, but it did not bespeak particular interest either. Shar noticed that her hands were heartbreakingly small, perfect and white, as if they belonged to a 25-year-old. Her only jewelry was a tasteful diamond wedding band.

"I did a year at the Hong Kong Design Institute, but then I switched to marketing at HKU." She paused, wondering if it was worth it to explain that it was due to pressure from her parents. "I also did some runway work. Nothing major, though."

"How much do you value sleep?"

"…Sleep?"

"Sleep, yes." The fox-faced woman looked at her pointedly.

"Not… much, I guess."

"Good. When can you start?"

Shar's face showed all the signs of her stomach having done a double-flip. Yuzuha raised her eyebrows.

"I don't know. I'm… here."

"I'll give you two weeks," said Yuzuha, closing the folder again. "Get everything in order and come to Tokyo as soon as you're able. Call my secretary to arrange airfare. Don't worry about finding a place to live; our home has, oh, only about a dozen spare bedrooms. Not that you'll be using your bed much."

"Two weeks?" Hikaru interjected. "Isn't that when work on my and Kaoru's line is scheduled to hit the ground running?"

"That's exactly right." Yuzuha turned back to Shar. "It'll be logistics work, mostly: scheduling, keeping track of people and things, correspondence, coffee, that kind of thing. But it's a start, and you'll be working right under me, since I'll be needing all the help I can get, considering I'll be a little… less light on my feet in the near future. Then… who knows."

"And you'll be living with us, Shar!" Hikaru exclaimed, rubbing his brother's shoulder gingerly with ill-concealed excitement.

"AND you'll be seeing us at work, because we'll be the faces of mom's new campaign!" Kaoru added, his smile nearly too big for his face. It seemed they would not be leaving Hazeltown behind after all - at least not entirely.

"Please say you'll come!" the twins cried in unison.

Yuzuha flashed them both a severe look to the effect of "You're not ten and this isn't a sleepover," but both twins' eyes were fixed on Shar, their grins identical as they waited with bated breath for an answer.

Shar looked back at the three suspiciously un-Asian faces that were, quite ironically, at the helm of Japan's most successful fashion empire, and hardly knew how to feel. On the one hand, the job would be mostly scut-work, and by all accounts she would be worked to the bone doing things that were anything but creative. Even if she WOULD be working for the great Yuzuha, it felt like she was as far away as ever from the life she had wanted. Plus, for all anyone knew, that odd woman would fire in three weeks just as easily as she had taken her on. And more than that, she still could not tell if her work was any good, and whether it was worth it to try and resurrect her dreams. Ever since the story with her aunt, any hint of being in anyone's debt left a bad taste in her mouth. But still, it was a Chance, with better odds than she had seen in a while.

"It is an opportunity I don't deserve," she finally said, using the highest honorific she could remember and bowing her head. "But I will give it everything I have."

"Make it everything you have plus 500 percent and we have a deal." Yuzuha smiled, and the smile slipped momentarily into her improbable, sun-flecked eyes.

"As long as we're making deals, mom," Hikaru spoke up, "I'd like to have more of a role in the company as well. I want to start learning the management side of things, and I want to have a share of control over the creative process. I don't want you making me and Kaoru wear anything too far gone, if you know what I mean."

"Well," Yuzuha turned to her older son and narrowed her eyes, but her expression fell just short of disapproval. "I've been waiting for you to say that for, oh, only about fifteen years. I'm glad it didn't have to wait until I was on my deathbed."

She turned to Kaoru. "You'd like to do the same, I assume?"

"No, mom. I'll do the photo shoots, but I want to work on becoming a doctor."

"Oh, very good." She smiled, as if had known all along and was not surprised in the least. "Do I need to call the Otoris?"

"No, mom. You can hire me tutors, but I don't want you pulling any strings," said the younger twin firmly. "I want to do this on my own merits as much as possible."

"Good. Because I wouldn't have called the Otoris anyway. I got where I am in life on my own, and I want you to do the same."

"That's not exactly true, mom," Hikaru cut in. "You were rich to begin with."

"There are many rich girls. But there's only one me."

Hikaru decided not to fight it. They had been down that road before, and there was really no point. After all, you did not pick your family, a fact that was both a blessing and a curse.

The twins laced their fingers under the table.


	18. Epilogue

That winter, the twins made their debut in the fashion world in the ad campaign for HIT, a young adult clothing line Hikaru had had a hand in designing. Their mother got her wish - after many years of a moratorium on media coverage, the twins' emergence into the public eye created a media frenzy of historic proportions. In the spring, Yuzuha gave birth to a baby girl who looked far more Japanese than the twins did. Hikaru and Kaoru became like second fathers to her.

A year and a half later, Kaoru was admitted to University of Tokyo Medical School. He took the exams as Kaoru Hitachi, fictitious daughter of a deceased childless couple distantly related to the Hitachiins - in part to prove that he didn't his mother's name to do what he'd set out to accomplish. That same year, Manny matriculated at the medical faculty at UCLA. The two stayed in touch, and when Kaoru spent a year training at UCLA as part of an exchange program, they lived as roommates. The experience proved invaluable to Kaoru in gaining insight into American approaches to treating eating disorders, and he followed it up with residency training at the University of Hawaii. After that, it was only a matter of time before Manny and her husband, a Hapa who managed to get repatriated, joined Kaoru in Tokyo to help run Japan's first clinic dedicated to eating concerns.

Shar continued to work for Yuzuha, in time realizing her dream of becoming a junior creative director. In time, she brought Gif to live with her as her girlfriend. They often double dated with Hikaru and Kaoru, and only one in ten waiters could tell exactly who was whose date.

Kim and Sammie married rich, both moved to Beverly Hills, and became housewives. Happily, both were more decorative than desperate - at least most days. The two remained friends, and Kim designed handbags, though to less acclaim than Yuzuha. Natalie got her wish, and was elected to Homecoming Queen as a senior in high school, while Margo's husband diversified his business to produce a brand of American Umeshu.

Hikaru pursued a joint degree in business and design, and took up running Hitachiin Group together with his mother before he had even graduated, never having been one to let his schooling interfere with his education. Yuzuha had more free time as a result, and was able to be there far more for her youngest daughter. Kaoru would have been happy to witness that his mother and brother fought rarely, but by that point he was putting in 14-hour days as a part of his training at the U. of Tokyo Hospital. On the wards, he was a sort of Haruhi - female on paper, dressed like a man, and was universally treated as one. For those who "truly wanted to know," he had undergone gender reassignment surgery, but remained a woman on paper to be able to legally married to the love of his life**. He also dyed his hair a more pedestrian color.

(**People who have undergone gender reassignment surgery in Japan have the right to change their sex in legal documents - but apparently this is something you have to go out of your way to do, and it's not required).

Through it all, the twins still fell asleep every night nose to nose and eye to eye, sharing sweet words of encouragement and stories of their days. They woke up nose to nose and eye to eye as well, and during weekends and Golden Week they could not have been pulled apart by a dozen horses. When Kaoru went to train at UCLA for a year and then at Hawaii for three, Hikaru waited patiently, and flew to see him almost every weekend.

On one of those visits, they finally hit their home run, clear out of the park. Eleven** years after the Hazeltown summer, after Kaoru completed residency in the U.S. and returned to Japan to practice, the brothers designed and built a house for themselves, and held a small commitment ceremony for family and friends. Among those in attendance were Tamaki and Haruhi Suouh, as well as Kyoya and Gaby Otori, who had flown in from San Francisco. The two of them had made a home for themselves there three years prior, and had been arguing happily ever since. Yuzuha was the guest of honor.

(**Finish high school = 2 years; Medical school in Tokyo (with 1 year abroad at UCLA) = 6 years; Residency in Hawaii = 3 years. This makes them 27.)

Hikaru could never forget the day he had informed their mother about the marriage. The two were having a working lunch in the company restaurant on the second day of spring when he finally let the shoe drop.

"You know, mom, I was thinking of getting married."

"That's wonderful, son. To whom?"

"A girl named Kaoru Hitachi, graduate of University of Tokyo Medical School, currently in her last year of residency at U-Hawaii. A distant relation of ours, I believe."

"Ah yes, I know her. Pale-skinned thing who dyes her hair black and dresses like a man, right? Lovely girl. Wonderfully kind soul, and too good for a punk like you, in my opinion. Excellent family. The mother's a bit of a tearaway, but I can live with that."

"I'm glad. We've liked each other for years, and I thought it was high time to make her mine. Private ceremony, of course."

"And how does she feel about this?"

"She agreed."

"Did you buy her a nice ring?"

"Not yet."

"Well, goodness, what are you waiting for?! I trust your sense of taste by now, but make sure it's worth at least twice your monthly income. Hell, I know I wouldn't let you marry my daughter if it cost any less!"


End file.
